North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum has rejected a request by the state’s Native American tribes for exclusive rights to host sports betting and online gambling, potentially a multimillion-dollar industry.

Burgum said on Wednesday, Nov. 2, he doesn’t believe there’s a “clear legal path” for him to unilaterally expand North Dakota’s gambling laws to allow the five tribes to host internet betting across the state. Internet gambling and sports betting are currently illegal in the state.

The state’s tribes, operating under state gambling compacts signed in 1992 that will expire at the end of the year, petitioned Burgum to give them exclusive rights to the online betting market to make up for revenue lost at tribal casinos due to the legalization and popularity of electronic pull tab machines. The tribes rely on casinos as a crucial source of income and employment.

Five years after the Republican-led legislature authorized
the slot-like machines, about 4,500 e-tabs have popped up at 800 sites around the state, according to Burgum’s news release. The revenue generated by machines benefits charities,
which pushed back on the tribes’ request
for exclusive online gambling rights at a hearing last month.

Gamblers wagered nearly $1.75 billion on e-tabs in fiscal year 2022, according to state figures.

Cynthia Monteau, the director of the United Tribes Gaming Association, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more from Forum News Service’s Jeremy Turley

Fargo police officers, North Dakota troopers and Cass County sheriff’s deptuies worked together to patrol downtown Fargo during a weekend of Halloween revelry, resulting in dozens of citations and traffic stops.

A group of officers, deputies, troopers and police dogs took part in the crackdown from about 10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29, into early Sunday, Oct. 30, Fargo police said.

Concerns about crime, over-consumption and homelessness in downtown have lately been on the minds of Fargo’s leaders and residents
.

The Fargo Police Department on Monday
opened a new substation at 511 4th Ave. N. in the Mercantile Building
. The move came about three years after the department moved its headquarters from downtown to 25th Street and First Avenue North.

“The goal was to conduct enhanced law enforcement activities in partnership with downtown businesses and law enforcement partners to maintain a safe environment for the citizens of Fargo, visitors and surrounding communities,” the police said in a statement.

Read more

West Fargo is not immune to the national shortage of daycare providers, but some members of the City Commission are hoping to help the workforce issue that has affected many families.

Commissioner Mandy George said the limited daycare options for families in West Fargo and around the metro area has been a concern of hers since she was elected. She’s heard from many residents requesting some sort of help to help address the issue.

Statewide the supply of child care meets 88% of the demand, according to a report by North Dakota KIDS COUNT, a statewide resource for data on the well-being of children. Child care is especially limited during non-traditional hours is limited across the state, with only 3% of licensed facilities open on weekends, 4% open during evening hours and 25% open during early morning hours.

The cost of child care is also an issue for many parents. About 5,000 children received financial assistance in 2020, but 21,000 children live below the poverty line in North Dakota.

So, George took the initiative of bringing forward an exploratory group to the City Commission as a whole. With the commission’s approval, she and Commissioner Mark Simmons along with city staff including the new Economic Development Director Casey Sanders-Berglund, Assistant City Administrator Dustin Scott, Administrator Tina Fisk, Planning Director Aaron Nelson and Malachi Peterson, met recently to brainstorm ideas on how the city might help alleviate the problem.

“I see stories in the paper, it was a big issue that candidates are talking about,” George said. “There just isn’t any childcare, It’s not they’re asking for free childcare, they’re asking for help in finding some. I know we’re not going to solve the issue but the good news is that we can at least help.”

Read more from The Forum’s Wendy Reuer

Alyssa Goelzer / The Forum

In the time remaining this year, Fargo Public Schools officials intend to work on plans for building a new school on property the district owns near Davies High School.

Superintendent Rupak Gandhi said there is more than one reason the school is needed right now, though a major one is a desire on the part of the district to create a middle school that would serve as the primary feeder school for Davies High.

While a school built near Davies would be planned as a middle school, Gandhi said the more immediate use of the space would be to provide classrooms to temporarily take enrollment pressure off three schools — Bennett Elementary, Discovery Middle School and Davies High.

Gandhi said land the school district owns on 76th Avenue South could one day be used for a new elementary school that would take pressure off Bennett Elementary, but he said a new school cannot feasibly be built on that district-owned site until after the Fargo-Moorhead flood diversion project is completed, which isn’t expected until the fall of 2027.

Read more from The Forum’s David Olson

The Bismarck Tribune via Newspapers.com

While investigating Michele Julson’s disappearance in Bismarck in 1994, police detectives learned she had told friends and family that a Bismarck Police lieutenant named Donald Schaffer had been harassing her. Julson’s cold-case file offers no indication that Schaffer was ever investigated or questioned about the harassment or Julson’s disappearance.

In the new and perhaps final episode of Season 7 of the Dakota Spotlight investigative podcast, founder and host James Wolner looks into Schaffer, his long career at the Bismarck Police Department and how his paths crossed with Julson’s before she disappeared.

A lot of strange things were happening to Julson just before she fell off the face of the earth in August of 1994. Between anonymous hang-up phone calls at home, her car being vandalized, being followed home from work and an ominous automobile cruising past her front door at night, Julson was feeling harassed and on edge. Julson told friends that one of the people harassing her at work was a Bismarck police officer . . . named Don Schaffer.

Schaffer’s rise to lieutenant was not without controversy and it abruptly ended in 1996 after Schaffer was arrested for allegedly terrorizing and assaulting his girlfriend. In her application for an emergency protection order against him, Schaffer’s girlfriend said he threw her down some stairs twice and punched her in the face. “He was yelling he was going to kill me,” she wrote.

Read more