North Dakota governor vetoes the housing budget — by mistake
(AP) — When North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong took up an agency budget bill approved by the legislature, he vetoed a couple of line items. At least, that was his intention Monday. Instead, he accidentally vetoed $35 million for the state’s housing budget.
Now the state is figuring out how to deal with the unusual problem of a mistaken veto.
“I have no recollection of anything like this happening in the 37 years I’ve been here,” John Bjornson, legislative council director, said Thursday. “So, yeah, I’d say it’s a little extraordinary.”
Armstrong wasn’t the only governor to possibly flub a line-item veto this week. Late Wednesday, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen announced that he would be striking about $47 million in funding and cash transfers over the next two years from budget bills passed last week by the Nebraska Legislature. Those cuts included about $12 million over two years for the Nebraska Supreme Court.
But on Thursday afternoon, the Speaker of the Legislature John Arch announced the body would be sending a letter to Pillen, a fellow Republican, informing him he had missed a 5-day deadline, which came at midnight Wednesday, to properly file the line-item vetoes and that the line items are now law.