BISMARCK - The state Administrative Committee on Veterans Affairs will update the commissioner's job description before hiring a new one, its chairman said Wednesday.
Rudy Jenson of Valley City, N.D., said the hiring process will take a few months. The initial screening committee will not include members of the 15-member administrative committee.
The committee needs a new commissioner after it fired Bob Hanson on Friday, saying he had not followed their instructions on running the Veterans Affairs office in Fargo.
Jenson would like a new commissioner by January but acknowledges that could be unrealistic, given the steps that must be taken. After the job description is revamped, he said, the position is advertised for a month. Job Service will narrow the number of applicants to seven and send the list to a special selection committee that will narrow it again to five or three applicants and send those names to a subcommittee of the administrative committee.
The subcommittee will chose a preferred candidate and present their recommendation to the full administrative committee.
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Jenson said public reaction to the firing has been mainly phone calls asking why the committee fired Hanson instead of accepting his resignation. When he told callers why they were satisfied, he said.
Committee members said during the meeting they were leery of Hanson's saying he would resign on a date to be mutually agreed-upon by him and the committee.
"If we would have agreed to that, we don't know how long it would have drug on," Jenson said Wednesday.
One of two committee members who abstained from voting Friday but did not give a reason, said he "couldn't agree or disagree" with the motion at the time. John Hanson of Grand Forks said this week that as he drove home Friday, he realized "I should have voted "no."
A new law might be needed to guide North Dakota's hundreds of public board appointees on when they may, must or cannot abstain from voting, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said this week.
Earlier this year, Stenehjem issued an opinion saying members of political subdivision boards, such as those governing cities, counties, townships, school boards and park boards, can't abstain unless they have a direct personal or pecuniary interest in the outcome. But the law doesn't cover panels such as the Administrative Committee on Veterans Affairs because they do not govern a political subdivision, he said.
Cole works for Forum Communications Co., which owns the Herald.
