Press Pass: Snell Harvesting operates 18 combines that travel across six states, Civil Service Commission hears fired city attorney’s appeal, Cramer: Role in Trump’s campaign ‘greatly exaggerated’, Legislature plugs $310 million budget gap

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Snell Harvesting operates 18 combines that travel across six states

More than 700 miles separates Tom Snell from the small area of rural Hettinger County for most of the year. But in late summer, he calls it home for four to six weeks.

Snell owns and operates Snell Harvesting based out of Ellinwood, Kan., where he has 18 John Deere combines that travel to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota.

Civil Service Commission hears fired city attorney’s appeal

The fate of the recently fired Dickinson city attorney is still uncertain after an appeal hearing with the Dickinson Civil Service Commission on Thursday morning.

Jennifer Gooss, the former city-employed attorney, argued that the city has handled other cases of employee misconduct differently than hers while attorneys for the city said she violated professional conduct codes set by the state Supreme Court.

Gooss was fired on June 29 after an internal investigation centered around her conduct while compiling with an open-records request made Feb. 26 by her husband, Jeff Gooss.

Cramer: Role in Trump’s campaign ‘greatly exaggerated’

Rep. Kevin Cramer says his role in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign “has been greatly exaggerated.”

The second-term North Dakota Republican - one of the first members of Congress to support the New York businessman’s candidacy - said multiple reporters in Washington, D.C., hounded him for three weeks prior to Trump’s visit to North Dakota in May, after it was learned Cramer was helping Trump write a speech about energy for the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference.

Legislature plugs $310 million budget gap, looks ahead to next session

North Dakota lawmakers adjourned from a historic three-day special session Thursday with a $310 million budget fix that Republican majority leaders called a successful bridge to the 2017 session but Democrats criticized as missing opportunities to help the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

House members passed the bill 82-8, with four members absent and one Republican voting with seven Democrats against it.

Challenge in store for mountain bikers in Saturday’s Maah Daah Day 100

This Saturday at 6 a.m., while most will still be soundly tucked into their beds, several hundred dedicated thrill seekers will be tucking themselves into a 106-mile cycling course that’s as grueling as it is beautiful.

The Maah Daah Hey 100, as it has for the last four years, will take riders on a journey through the heart of the Badlands - up and down Devil’s Pass, around slim, winding paths with 100-foot drops on either side, past grazing buffalo, and through the Little Missouri River.