Prosecutors dismissed a felony conspiracy charge against two top executives of North Dakota’s workers’ compensation agency, days before they were to appear in court to make their pleas.
Sandy Blunt, the chief executive officer of Workforce Safety and Insurance, and Romi Leingang, the agency’s investigations director, had been scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday, Oct. 24th on a charge of conspiring to disclose confidential driver’s license photos. At an arraignment, a criminal defendant enters a plea.
Late Friday, prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the charge against Blunt and Leingang. The motion said a WSI lawyer had told Leingang the photos she obtained from a Department of Transportation database were not confidential.
Blunt may have relied on the mistaken legal advice as well, said the dismissal motion, which was signed by Burleigh County assistant state’s attorneys Cynthia Feland and Lloyd Suhr. Prosecutors learned of the new circumstances only a few days ago, and then decided to drop the charges, the motion said.
Blunt’s attorney, Mike Hoffman, of Bismarck, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment about the dismissal. Leingang’s attorney, Tim Purdon, of Bismarck, said Leingang “never should have been charged in this matter.”
Blunt also had faced two separate felony charges alleging he misspent about $18,000 in WSI funds on meals, gifts and trinkets for agency employees. South Central District Judge Robert Wefald dismissed those charges in August, saying Blunt had not personally benefited from the questioned expenditures.
Wefald’s ruling is being appealed to the North Dakota Supreme Court. He had been scheduled to preside at the arraignment of Blunt and Leingang next week.
The two officials have been on leave from their jobs since the charges were filed last April. The board of directors that oversees Workforce Safety and Insurance could meet as early as Monday to decide whether Blunt should return to work, said its chairman, Robert Indvik, of Bottineau.
Indvik said the pending Supreme Court appeal of the two felony charges dismissed by Wefald should not affect the board’s decision on Blunt’s return.
“It shouldn’t be a concern. It is dismissed,” Indvik said. “That is the standing of it, unless there is something that happens to overturn that.”
North Dakota driver’s license photos are not public records, although WSI had an agreement with the Department of Transportation to use them for limited purposes.
WSI investigators downloaded some images from Department of Transportation computers in February 2006 to try to track down a person who was e-mailing information about how much WSI employees are paid, court records say.
Blunt called the incident “spamming” and vowed, according to testimony in the case, to use whatever agency resources were available to discover the e-mailer’s identity. Salary information at North Dakota government agencies _ including Workforce Safety and Insurance _ is a public record.
During an August preliminary hearing for Leingang and Blunt, Highway Patrol trooper Shannon Henke said Leingang and another investigator took a book of six photos to the Mandan public library and a Bismarck branch post office.
At least two of the photos were from Department of Transportation files, Henke testified. The photos were of no help in discovering the e-mailer’s identity.
Feland and Suhr quoted WSI attorney Jodi Bjornson as saying during an interview last Monday that Leingang had asked her if she could legally use the driver’s license photos before she went to the library and post office.
“Bjornson recalled that she had reviewed the law pertaining to open records, and based on a review of that law, had advised that the photos were not confidential,” the dismissal motion says. “While photos may not generally be considered confidential, DOT photos are clearly confidential.”
Leingang relied on Bjornson’s advice, and it could be assumed Blunt did also, the dismissal motion says. During a separate deposition April 17, Bjornson said she had “no independent memory” of Leingang asking her for legal advice on the photos, the dismissal motion says.
Bjornson said she was disappointed with the dismissal motion’s description of her testimony, which she said “has been consistent throughout the process. It’s as simple as that.”
During the preliminary hearing, Henke testified that shortly before Leingang was charged, Bjornson told Leingang she had no memory of telling her that using the photos was legal.
However, Henke said, Bjornson did not dispute Leingang’s own recollection that Bjornson had assured her there was nothing wrong with using the photos. Bjornson called Leingang honest and “a straight shooter,” Henke testified.
Indvik said the interim WSI chief executive officer, John Halvorson, could bring Leingang back to work immediately, and Purdon said Leingang was looking forward to resuming her job.
“Unfortunately, this dismissal cannot erase the seven months of legal expenses, heartache, and sleepless nights endured by Romi and her young family,” Purdon’s statement said.
Indvik said he was not surprised by Friday’s dismissal.
“This was our position all along, that there was nothing illegal in the handling of the spamming incident at all,” Indvik said.
Topics Workers' Compensation
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