Holmberg case prompts North Dakota lawmakers to review travel policies

North Dakota House chamber. (Kyle Martin/For the North Dakota Monitor)

Former Sen. Ray Holmberg’s guilty plea on a charge related to child sex tourism may prompt a review of rules governing lawmaker travel, House Majority Leader Rep. Mike Lefor said.

Holmberg on Thursday confessed in federal court to taking several trips to Prague with the intent to pay for sexual contact with children.

Some of those visits lined up with cultural exchange trips funded through the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction and organized by the North Dakota School Boards Association. Travel records even suggest some of his flight tickets to Prague were paid for with state money.

“What happened should never happen again,” said Lefor, R-Dickinson.

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While those trips didn’t come out of the legislative branch’s budget, Holmberg frequently traveled for legislative business, according to records shared by Legislative Council.

The chair of Legislative Management approves travel requests by state lawmakers. Holmberg held this position between 2013 and 2018, meaning he was able to approve some of his own trips — which included visits to Puerto Rico, Alaska and Miami Beach.

In 2015, he flew to Oslo, Norway, to meet with European criminal justice leaders for a program called the US-American Criminal Justice Innovation Project. The program covered all his travel expenses.

Holmberg reported about $109,000 in travel costs between 2013 and his resignation in 2022, according to Legislative Council data obtained by the North Dakota Monitor. That is more than any other lawmaker, the records show.

Legislative Council used state money to reimburse Holmberg for about $13,000 of that. The other roughly $97,000 was paid by outside entities, though the records don’t list the origin of the funding.

“There are some meetings for which some travel costs are paid by other sources,” Legislative Council Director John Bjornson wrote in an email. For example, many meetings hosted by the National Conference of State Legislatures provide stipends for attendees, especially for lawmakers who hold leadership roles within the organization or serve on event panels, Bjornson wrote.

He said the rules governing lawmaker travel haven’t changed since Holmberg’s time in the Legislature. That means the chair of Legislative Management is still in charge of approving their own out-of-state travel expenses.

As a work-around, Lefor said he simply pays out-of-pocket for such trips.

“I don’t even take my salary during those days,” he said. He recalled Legislative Council paying his registration fees for a couple meetings, however.

Lefor said he doesn’t think future Legislative Management chairs should feel pressured to do the same, but that the Legislature should consider amending its procedures so no one is in the position of being able to approve their own trips.

He said he plans to discuss the matter in future legislative meetings.

Lefor maintained that there are legitimate benefits to sending lawmakers out of state to attend meetings.

The trips tend to be to conferences hosted by groups like the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Council of State Governments.

“I encourage legislators to take these trips,” Lefor said. “You get to know people from other states that are in leadership positions and what their challenges are, and you come away with some pretty good ideas.”

Lawmakers have to file a form with Legislative Council explaining what they learned after they return from an out-of-state trip funded by the Legislature.

In all, the Legislature spent roughly $460,000 in taxpayer money on out-of-state travel between 2014 and 2024, according to state data.

The vast majority of the trips were domestic. Of those that were international, nearly all were to Canadian cities such as Calgary, Winnipeg or Regina.

Aside from Holmberg’s Norway trip, the only other international trip that wasn’t to Canada was a 2014 visit to Croatia by former House Majority Leader Rep. Al Carlson for a Transatlantic Leadership Forum conference. In that instance, too, Legislative Council didn’t have to pay any money.

It’s worth noting that the legislative branch doesn’t necessarily document when lawmakers go on trips that are paid by other state agencies or third parties — like the cultural exchange program that Holmberg participated in.

State agencies have different internal policies for reporting and approving travel, according to a research memo prepared by the North Dakota Ethics Commission. There aren’t any reporting requirements for lawmakers who accept money from a third party for an out-of-state trip.

In other words, there’s no way to get a definitive list of every place a lawmaker has traveled in their capacity as a state official — or how much those trips cost.

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The Ethics Commission is considering adopting new travel and financial disclosure rules to change this. Their hope is to create a centralized online platform for public officials’ travel records, Executive Director Rebecca Binstock said.

Those discussions are still in their early stages; the commission has yet to consider official draft language for the rules.

Before any new rules can be adopted, the board would have to notify the public of a comment period and host a public hearing on the proposed changes. Then, the commission would have to vote to approve them.

Ethics Commission rules apply not only to the legislative branch, but to elected and appointed executive branch officials, lobbyists and candidates for office, too.

Holmberg admitted in federal court in Fargo there was enough evidence to support the charge of traveling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. A prosecutor said Holmberg took 14 trips to Prague between 2011 and 2021 with the intent of paying for sex with boys under 18. Holmberg told the judge he did not engage in that conduct when traveling to other countries.

A sentencing date has not yet been set.

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