November
2, 2010
Jim Long testified that after Halvorson's appointment as
interim CEO, there needed to be an investigation of Tim Hutchings, a member of
the Executive team who was accused of abusing organizational resources and
sexual harassing employees. Tuntland
established that Long was tasked to do a pre investigation report of the
complaint, and that Hutchings had been investigated before. Long said the investigation was performed
behind closed doors, and that he was concerned about retaliation from
Hutchings.
Long said he went to general counsel Bjornson, who was also
concerned, and referred Long to attorney Rob Forward. He said his intent was to protect himself,
and that Forward agreed to go along on the interview, but then backed out. Long said Forward said he was afraid. So Long said he brought up the idea of tape
recording the interview; he said it is
routnely done in investigations, and attornet Forward said that was a good
idea.
Long said he did tape Hutchings and fellow executive Sonja
Nallie, and they subsequently made complaints against him. That triggered an investigation of Long,
which was conducted by Tim Wallene (sp?) and the AG'sTog Anderson. Long said the result of the investigation was
that he had done nothing wrong.
Long said he had a conversation with Halvorson about the
tape recording, and that Halvorson didn't like it. Long says Halvorson ordered no more tape
recording, and Long followed his boss' instructions.
The charge against Blunt was dismissed, and Long said he
thought that charge was gone, that Blunt would not be prosecuted for it. The charges against Blunt and Leingang were
also dismissed. Tuntland asked whether,
up until that time, had Long ever contacted anyone to say he had information
about Blunt; Long said he did not
recall, and that Bjornson told him Mike Quinn of ND Bureau of Criminal
Investigation's would be calling. Long
said he took no action to get Quinn to call him.
Long said Quinn called at the request of the State's
attorney, and that he wished to ask questions about Blunt's use of
expenses. Long said he put the meeting
on his computer calendar, "mtg at BCI," which was open for all to
view.
Between the time Quinn had called and the meeting was set,
Long says he entered the WSI building one evening and noticed the beam of a
flashlight. He discovered Internal
Auditor Kay Grinsteinner rummaging through executive team member and Burleigh
County Commisioner Mark Armstrong's desk.
Long said Grinsteinner motioned him into the office and told him to look
at Armstrong's journal.
Tuntland asked Long whether he thought Grinsteinner had
authority to go through Armstrong's desk; he replied with a section from the
Internal Audit Charter, which gave auditors "unfettered access to all
documents and files." Long liked it
to airport TSA who, when they think there's a bomb, they turn things upside
down to find it.
Long said he couldn't put Armstrong's journal down, and
though he is not a lawyer, he thought he was seeing several crimes. He said he thought that since
Armstrong was both Blunt's buddy and Burleigh County
Commissioner, Armstrong would use his influence to make Blunt's investigation
go away.
He said it appeared Armstrong was in violation of not
providing open records to peoples' requests while providing them at no charge
to Blunt. He also said Armstrong and
someone else wer trying to sneak something out of the WSI building, but were
nervous because a reporter happeded to be there, and they thought they'd get
caught. Long said he didn't know what
the something was.
Long said Grinsteinner copied the journal and gave it to
him. After his subsequent meeting with
BCI's Quinn, who asked about Spencer's leave and moving expenses, Quinn asked
if there were anything else, nd Long handed him the copy of Armstrong's
journal.
That led to a search warrant for Armstrong's office. Long said he had the day off, and called
Grinsteinner from the TSC store. He
could hear someone paging him at the office, and asked Grinsteinner to patch
him through. Front desk person Sue Mertz
was calling, saying four cops were standing in the lobby of WSI. She handed the phone to Quinn, who said they
were not being allowed in. Quinn was
angry, Long said, ready to break the door down, but Long said he would come
over to the WSI building and let them in.
As he was escorting the cops to Armstrong's office, Long
says he overheard Sonja Nellie, a friend of Blunt's, talking on the phone. He said he heard Sandy's name, and heard her say ,"Jim
Long just walked in with four cops and they're heading to Mark's office."
Long says he waited until Quinn had copied Armstrong's
journal, then escorted them out of the building and went home, as it wsa his
day off. This was on a Friday.
But Long says he knew Blunt was going to be reinstated as
CEO the following Monday. So Saturday,
he filed a whistleblower protection request with state's attorney Cynthia
Feland.
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