During their regular session earlier this year, North Dakota lawmakers formed its own version of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

It's a task force, as opposed to a department, and state Auditor Josh Gallion, who is participating in the meetings, said they've been calling it TOGE to avoid confusion with the federal efforts. But it's been making good progress, including reviewing a big problem the state has when it comes to implementing policy.

Namely, that nobody bothers to define what the success of that policy might look like. "I think what we learned a lot was we don't have performance measures," Gallion said on this episode of Plain Talk. He pointed out that the state often creates things, like economic development programs aimed at creating jobs or drawing workers to the state, without any sort of a mechanism for measuring how many jobs were created, or how many workers were inspired to move here.

"Is the money that we're putting into these programs, are they achieving desirable results? You know, if we're going to put a million dollars into a workforce program, is it affecting change? Is it moving the needle? Are we bringing workforce in? And how do we calculate some of that?" he asked.

Gallion also addressed controversy over an audit of Stark County. The report from his office concluded that the county government was breaking state law capping general fund carry-over balances at no more than 75% of the previous year's revenues. That report also included a response from the county that said "we agree" with the finding, only the county says that Gallion's office added those words, and they didn't agree to it.

"We wanted them to state we agree or disagree," Gallion said. "That should be the beginning of every response." He also claimed that the change was made only after consultation with Stark County, though a quote from the county auditor indicated that she didn't expect her county's comments to be modified.

"I wrote our responses to the audit for Stark County and I don't think they should have changed them," Stark County Auditor/Treasurer Karen Richard told the Dickinson Press, "but I do appreciate them clarifying why they changed the language."

Also on this episode, co-host Chad Oban and I discuss the standoff between Gov. Kelly Armstrong, Senate Majority Leader David Hogue, and Senate Minority Leader Kathy Hogan over new appointments to the state Ethics Committee.

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