Six Seek Interim Director Position at North Dakota Workers’ Comp Agency

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Six people, including a one-time Fargo mayor and a former vice president at Montana’s workers’ compensation fund, have applied to be the interim chief executive officer of North Dakota’s Workforce Safety and Insurance agency.

A search committee of five WSI board members has scheduled a meeting at 11 a.m. Friday in Bismarck to decide which of the candidates to interview next week.

Bruce Furness, a former Fargo mayor; John Dorso, a former Fargo legislator and North Dakota House Republican majority leader; and Layne Kertamus, a former vice president of Montana’s workers’ compensation fund, have asked to be considered.

Furness, who is a Bismarck native, is a senior vice president for business relations and development at State Bank & Trust of Fargo. He worked for IBM for 30 years as a salesman, system engineer and development manager.

After Furness left IBM in 1992, he worked for North Dakota’s state chamber of commerce for four years, his resume says. He was Fargo’s mayor for 12 years, from 1994 to 2006, after two years as a city commissioner. Gov. John Hoeven has said he supports Furness for the interim position.

Dorso, who formerly owned a semitrailer sales and leasing business in Fargo, was one of the Legislature’s experts on workers’ compensation during 16 years in the North Dakota House.

He pushed legislation that set up WSI’s current board of directors and shifted the authority to hire the agency’s director from the governor to the board.

Dorso is a former House Republican majority leader and chairman of the House’s Industry, Business and Labor Committee, which oversees workers’ compensation bills. He lives in Venice, Fla.

“If you are interested in someone who has a long-term perspective of where the system has been, how far it has come, and is eager to develop a vision for WSI’s future, I am available for discussions,” Dorso wrote in a letter to the search committee.

Kertamus resigned his position as vice president for operations at Montana’s workers’ compensation fund in February, after 41/2 years in the job.

Tony Johnson, the agency’s vice president for human resources, said Thursday the parting was amicable. Kertamus could not be reached immediately for comment.

Kertamus supervised almost 140 people as vice president for operations, a division that handles underwriting and claims, Johnson said. The Montana fund has six vice presidents and about 300 employees, Johnson said.

Other candidates are Paul Traynor, a Devils Lake attorney and former general counsel for Nodak Mutual Insurance Co. of Fargo; John Vastag, a sales and marketing manager at Laney’s Inc., a Fargo heating and air conditioning contractor; and Peg Haug, of Bismarck, a former Workforce Safety and Insurance employee.

Traynor most recently worked as an attorney for Unitrin Inc., a Chicago-based business that owns insurance and financial companies, including the Kemper insurance company. He was Nodak Mutual’s general counsel for eight years.

Haug, in her letter to the board, said she was familiar with WSI’s operations from her nine years working there as a claims analyst and supervisor, a program director and a provider relations specialist.

“Many of the individuals listed as possible candidates (for interim chief executive) are great businessmen and politicians, but few have the firsthand background I have with WSI,” Haug wrote in her letter. “What is needed now is healing, rebuilding of trust and a more positive work environment for the staff at WSI. I believe I can provide those things for the staff because of the previous relationships I have with them.”

Haug worked at the agency from August 1995 to March 2005, she said in an interview, before going to Job Service North Dakota for almost three years.

She began working last month at the state Department of Commerce, tracking taxpayer subsidies for businesses and information from the state’s Centers of Excellence grant program to North Dakota’s colleges. Workforce Safety and the Department of Commerce have their offices in the same building in north Bismarck.

Vastag’s resume says he was director of a South Dakota office during the administration of Republican Gov. George Mickelson that was responsible for setting rates and auditing human services agencies. Mickelson, who was first elected in 1986 as South Dakota’s governor, was killed in an April 1993 plane crash.

Workforce Safety’s 11-member board hopes to hire an interim director next week to succeed John Halvorson, who has held the job since former chief executive Sandy Blunt was forced out in December. Halvorson is WSI’s chief of employer services.