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Mike Jacobs: Theodore Roosevelt library still faces challenges in North Dakota

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Mike Jacobs, Grand Forks Herald columnist.

Oh, no! Heidi Heitkamp checked out of the governor’s race! All three referral petitions failed! Whatever will we talk about now?

No worries. The Roosevelt Library is back in the news. Funding for the library was the subject of one of the referral petitions.

“The group pushing to build” the library “will see new leaderships as it begins a new fundraising effort,” John Hageman, Forum Company’s Bismarck correspondent, reported on Thursday . This doesn’t tell us much; perhaps it is only a personnel issue, but might not fully explain what’s going on – mostly because nobody is telling the whole story.

The explanation may be that the rich people behind the project discovered the conditions that the Legislature put on the state’s contribution, and began looking for cover in case the project collapses. Alternatively, some of the rich people behind the library may have discovered that the other rich people are hard to deal with, and are re-evaluating their own commitments (and are also looking for cover).

“Cover” – that is a reason to cut and run – was suggested the next day in an article by James MacPherson, the Associated Press reporter in Bismarck. He quoted former Gov. Ed Schafer, an important person in Medora, where the library would be located. He’s the son and heir of Harold Schafer, who turned Medora into the tourist town that it is today.

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“Anybody who thinks this is a done deal is crazy,” Schafer said in reference to a plan to build the library on land inside Theodore Roosevelt National Park. No proposal has been received, a park service spokesperson said.

During the legislative session, Gov. Doug Burgum, one of the rich people promoting the library, made two promises. One was that legislative approval of the idea would bring immediate pledges of private money. The other was that the Interior Department had indicated that land would be made available within the park.

So far, $52 million has been pledged, the foundation backing the library said, but it didn’t disclose the source. Some of it likely comes from the Walton Foundation; Melanie Walton is a North Dakota native and Dickinson State University alumna who is the daughter-in-law of Sam Walton, founder and namesake of the Walmart chain. She’s been active (perhaps hyper-active) in pushing the library. Among her demands was that the structure be in Medora, even though plans were so far underway that site preparation had begun on the DSU campus.

The Legislature put several conditions on its pledge of $50 million. First, $100 million in private money would have to be raised, and some of the money would have to go to DSU to complete the digitization of Roosevelt’s papers, a project that’s been ongoing. Also, the city of Dickinson would have to be reimbursed for money it had spent preparing for the library. The plan was for a smaller building; the Legislature promised $12 million in the 2017 session.

The potential referral of the funding might explain some of the delay that’s come up, but that doesn’t explain why the money didn’t appear when the governor promised it. That was well before the bill was passed and signed.

The library’s history goes back at least two decades, and it involves a couple of the Legislature’s dominant personalities, Sen Rich Wardner of Dickinson, the Republican majority leader in the Senate, and Rep. Bob Martinson of Bismarck, senior member of the House Appropriations Committee who has pursued and acquired state support for the Dickinson project in several sessions. Martinson put together the deal that the Legislature approved last session, including the guarantees for Dickinson and DSU. The funding was included in the budget for the governor’s office, which included Burgum’s salary.

At the time, observers suggested that Walton and Gov. Burgum, a software entrepreneur who is a member of Microsoft’s board of directors, could fund the project themselves. That could happen – but it won’t go ahead unless somebody cuts the deals necessary, including one with the National Park Service.

Medora’s city engineer added his own caveat.

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“There is nowhere in Medora itself where there is room to build a library,” Mike Njos told MacPherson.

Medora residents had pointed that out during discussion of the library. In the same article, Schafer was quoted as saying, “Almost every federal thing you do – that’s a barrier. A federal location is fraught with federal problems.”

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt would have to sign off on any deal involving the Park Service, an Interior Department agency. He has North Dakota connections. For many years, he lobbied in Congress on behalf of the Garrison Diversion project. He has also worked for oil and gas interests.

Wrong again: U.S. Sen. Lynn J. Frazier lost his seat in 1940. I cheated him out of two years’ service last week.

Mike Jacobs is a former editor and publisher of the Herald.

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