Tuntland ReDirects Grinsteinner

November 16, 2010

Grinsteinner testified that when Sandy Blunt returned to WSI, she believed she would be fired because she had taken an issue regarding Blunt to the audit chair in early 2007 and thought she might face retaliation.  It was a question of a firefighter's grant that Sandy Blunt had approved $100,000 even though there was no program in place for that grant at that time. 

Tuntland turned to the issue of the ITTP project and introduced a document that showed the internal auditor would be involved because of the size of the program and the risk involved. 

Tuntland then asked about the contact information allegedly given to Dave Spencer.  She said people were complaining about Spencer approaching them for grant writing, that employers were contacting her with complaints.  She asked if management could write a letter to Spencer telling him his actions were inappropriate. 

Tuntland then turned to an email Grinsteinner had sent to the state auditors called the dirty little secret email where she alleged improprieties in claim handling.  There was a discussion as to the exact date of a Brady Martz study and when it had been released. 

Tuntland established that the Marsh report referred to a rejection rate of 12 of 84 claims studied, which meant a 14% rejection rate. 

Grinsteinner testified she had made a report to the board and stated that she was writing as a concerned citizen of North Dakota.  She said she had done so because that term was used by WSI under their Carver model of governance and she was trying to frame it in context of this being a governance issue. 

She also said that Connolly was not credentialed to review internal audit functions, that he was an attorney, but not a CPA and that she was surprised about his questions.  She said that he immediately told her that her letter to the board, which had outlined specific concerns about WSI, was insubordinate and that she had no right to have written that as a citizen of North Dakota.  Grinsteinner said she felt that he was not trying to fact find, but rather push an agenda. 

As to the issue of personnel records, she said she was concerned that many employees were telling her their personnel files were being released but they were not being informed of that. 

Tuntland asked about a meeting she'd had at Famous Dave's with Long after the Armstrong search when NorthDecoder.com's Chad Nodland came in.  She said she could recall the meeting but she'd never met Nodland, that she thought discussions centered around the journal as that was the topic of the day, but that she was in shock over the whole matter and could not recall specifics.