4-county road board likely to disband

The Road Weight Enforcement Board, a multicounty truck regulatory enforcement agency formed by Stutsman, Barnes, Dickey and LaMoure counties in 2011, could disband by the end of the year.
The Stutsman County Commission approved officially notifying the Road Weight Enforcement Board that Stutsman County will terminate its involvement in the board either by the end of this year or sooner, depending on what board members want to do.
The matter came before the commission Thursday in response to a letter Stutsman County Sheriff Chad Kaiser had submitted to the Road Weight Enforcement Board concerning Deputy Tim Gillespie. Gillespie has served as the Road Weight Enforcement Board’s truck regulation enforcement officer. Kaiser said that effective May 22 Gillespie was no longer authorized to act as a deputy for the Stutsman County Sheriff’s Office.
“Since I do not have the authority over his employment to formally take administrative action against him,” Kaiser said, ”I am sanctioning his ability to perform any law enforcement duties as a Stutsman County deputy in the foreseeable future.”
An attempt to contact Gillespie Thursday evening for comment was unsuccessful.
Kaiser said Gillespie was involved in a felony stop on U.S. Highway 281 south of Jamestown on May 20. Kaiser said he and Gillespie had a difference of opinion in how Gillespie conducted himself during the stop. After reading Gillespie’s report about the incident, Kaiser said he decided to terminate Gillespie’s authority in Stutsman County.
Stutsman County Commissioner Dave Schwartz, who is and chair of the Road Weight Enforcement Board, said even before the incident with Gillespie the future of the four-county board was in doubt.
“I had talked with the LaMoure and Dickey (counties’) representative and they had talked with Gillespie, and they had indicated to him that their counties would be pulling out of the board.”
The Road Weight Enforcement Board was formed in 2011. Each county contributes $25,000, which pays for Gillespie’s salary, uniform, enforcement vehicle and portable scales. Schwartz said Gillespie’s primary duty was enforcing commercial truck regulations, mainly overweight vehicles.
Schwartz said all four counties are seeing more commercial truck traffic and see enforcing trucking rules as more than a one-person job.
“The four counties that make up the board are physically large and spread out,” he said. “It’s a difficult area for one person to cover.”
Schwartz said the biggest issue with the Road Weight Enforcement Board was that authority for enforcing trucking regulations is with each county’s sheriff’s office.
“Here we had county commissioners and road foremen trying to dictate how to enforce trucking regulations to law enforcement,” he said. “It led to problems.”
Schwartz said Dickey and LaMoure counties want to add staff to their sheriff departments. He said he doesn’t see the Road Weight Enforcement Board continuing with just Stutsman and Barnes counties.
Kaiser said the $25,000 Stutsman County has been contributing to the Road Weight Enforcement Board can go toward buying a set of portable scales for the sheriff’s office. Kaiser said Dan White is undergoing deputy training and part of his duties are going to be truck regulation enforcement.
“As things get busier out east (a reference to work possibly beginning at the planned CHS nitrogen fertilizer plant site near Spiritwood),” he said, “we will have another deputy training on how to use those scales.”
Schwartz said the Road Weight Enforcement Board will hold a meeting in the coming weeks to determine what it will do in the future. No date was set for that meeting.
In other business, Casey Bradley, county auditor/chief operating officer, said he will attend the North Dakota Auditors and Treasurers Association meeting in Medora next week. During the weeklong meeting Stutsman County will be recognized for its use of industry-leading software from Tyler Technologies and Socrata in improving transparency in how the county handles its finances, including budget and expenditures.
“The Legislature focused on property tax transparency earlier this year,” Bradley said. “Some of the legislators have recognized that what we are doing is ideally what they would like to see across the state.”
Bradley said Tyler Technologies, which created the software the county uses to provide property tax information to the public, and Socrata, the firm that provides the software Open Budget and Open Expenditures that the county uses to provide the public access to the county’s budget and spending plans, will demonstrate their products at the meeting using Stutsman County’s information as an example.
“It’s a compliment to Stutsman County that we are leading the way in providing transparency to the public on property tax information and our budget and spending,” Bradley said.
Sun reporter Chris Olson can be reached at 701-952-8454 or by email at colson@ jamestownsun.com