Steve Fallgatter, Driscoll

It comes as no surprise that the constitutionality of North Dakota’s Beef Commission Act has landed in court. Ranchers who choose not to pay dues to the Stockmen’s Association have been advising the legislature for a decade or more about their dissatisfaction with the law’s preferential treatment of certain select groups, yet the legislature has ignored them. It would have been so easy to amend and correct the century code, yet here we are, to no one’s surprise.

The first mistake out of the gate was to assign oversight and governance of the state beef checkoff to the commission tasked with oversight and governance of the federal beef checkoff. After the state checkoff was implemented in 2015, it didn’t take long for the commission to start sending hundreds of thousands of our checkoff dollars south to Colorado into the coffers of NCBA’s Federation. It is unacceptable and offensive to me that my state checkoff dollars are part of those handed over to the group that has fought tooth and nail to defeat mandatory country of origin labeling. NCBA is the outfit that declared in its battle against MCOOL, “beef is beef no matter where it comes from.” Not in my world.

The second mistake was not permitting a producer referendum on the new checkoff to see if producers approved of the new tax. It’s almost as if lawmakers think they know better than we do about what’s best for us.

Worse yet, any North Dakota cattle producer requesting a refund of his or her state checkoff is stripped of their eligibility to serve on the commission for three years. Let me be clear: if I request a refund of my state checkoff, it is NOT a signal that I don’t believe in the program’s possibilities; it’s because I do not want to fund NCBA, and I want my money to remain in North Dakota promoting North Dakota beef.

As a North Dakota taxpayer, I expect the attorney general to expeditiously move this case forward rather than trying to run out the clock in hopes that the three North Dakota cattle producers who brought the suit will run out of resources and energy. They won’t. Why? Because there are many of us behind them who believe this lawsuit needed to happen, and we are putting our shoulders behind the wheel and opening our checkbooks. We are watching what our state government does, and we have long memories.

They’re fighting a fight for all of us and our rights under the ND Constitution. It’s the right thing to do.