You’ve heard me say this before: Elections have consequences. Even in tiny remote places like Billings County in the North Dakota Bad Lands, where a total of just 628 people voted in the races for the Billings County Commission this past month.

In Billings County, commissioners are elected to represent geographic districts. The county is divided into three of them. Two of the three members of the commission were up for re-election. Incumbent Dean Rodne received 391 votes to defeat challenger John Hild. But newcomer Jim Haag received 399 votes to defeat incumbent Lester Iverson.

Why did Rodne and Haag win? The overwhelming issue was their opposition to the use of the county’s power of Eminent Domain — the abuse of that power was so bad that I’m going to capitalize those words whenever I use them in stories about Billings County — to take land from unwilling ranchers to build a new bridge across the Little Missouri State Scenic River.

Haag, who was sworn in and took office at the commission’s 2025 organizational meeting Tuesday of this week, said he knocked on almost every door in Billings County in his campaign and found overwhelming opposition to the bridge and the use of Eminent Domain to build it.

Rodne has been opposed to using Eminent Domain to take land from the Short family of ranchers — descendants of former North Dakota Congressman Don Short — since he joined the commission four years ago. But until this election, he had been in the minority.

The two stressed at their organizational meeting Tuesday that it is just not neighborly to take someone’s land, against their will and then build a road on it, and a bridge, to accommodate the hordes of oil tankers that would go roaring across the land in clouds of dust, coating everything from prairie grass to ranch buildings to livestock and wildlife with a fine coat of Bad Lands dirt.

At one point some years ago, one of the former Billings County commissioners, who shall go unnamed here because last time I used his name he sued me (he lost, I won) said as many as a thousand trucks a day would use the bridge. A lot of those, by the way, were his company’s trucks. Just sayin’.

And so, the on-again, off-again, on-again Little Missouri River Crossing a dozen or so miles north of Medora is off-again. Well, almost. It might be by the time you read this. Officially, it could take a few days.

At the very end of Tuesday’s meeting, after about an hour of discussion among the commissioners, the county’s lawyers, and county residents who filled the commission meeting room, Rodne and Haag, in a 2-1 vote with holdover Steve Klym, an acolyte of that unnamed former commissioner voting against it, told their lawyers to start proceedings to kill the bridge.

The end of Tuesday’s Billings County Commission meeting. And the beginning of the end of the Little Missouri River Crossing.

They scheduled a special meeting for this afternoon, at 1 p.m. in the Billings County Courthouse. Oh, the guillotine won’t officially fall on the project today because there are a few ongoing court cases that have to be dismissed, so judges have to be called and told “Never mind.” That might take a few weeks or months.

Tuesday, the attorney for the Short family, Derrick Braaten, showed up at the meeting with the family’s request to end the project. Because of some legal technicalities, Braaten wasn’t allowed to address the commissioners, but he presented their requests in writing. They had five.

• Rescind the August 2023 motion passed by the commission declaring there was a “necessity” for the bridge. They needed that to begin Eminent Domain proceedings.
• Tell the Billings County State’s Attorney, and the law firm he had hired to assist him, to “cease pursuing any actions to condemn the Short Ranch.
• “Request a stay in litigation” from the North Dakota District Court, the U.S. District Court in North Dakota and the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, where there are legal cases pending. That means all the court proceedings would end.
• Tell the engineering firms working for the county on the bridge project to “cease any and all work and submit final invoices for all work to date.”  
• Negotiate a final settlement of the lawsuits, giving the Short family their land back (the county had claimed it in a “quick take” action about a year ago).

I think that’s the process that is going to start at today’s meeting.

As I looked around the room at the end of Tuesday’s meeting, I could only see three people who were disappointed by the commissioners’ actions: Commissioner Klym, State’s Attorney Pat Weir and his hired counsel Tami Norgard, who had spent thousands of hours working through all the legal issues in the days since the first Environmental Impact Statement process began back in 2007, much of that in the last 18 months with all the pending court cases. I counted six times that Norgard, who joined the meeting remotely on the big computer screen in the commission chambers, urged the commissioners to hold an executive session meeting to discuss this. Each time, Commission Chairman Rodne hunched his shoulders, set his jaw and demurred. He was determined to do this in the public eye. Good for him.

This project has been going on for a long time.

Rodne pointed out that, according to figures he got from County Auditor Marcia Kessel, the county had spent $454,000 since the summer of 2023 on the project, mostly in legal and engineering fees. Someone speculated that the county had probably spent $3 million or $4 million since the project started more than 15 years ago.

“It’s time to end it,” Rodne said. “That’s enough.”

The lawyers, and Klym, though, repeatedly urged the commission to let the legal process play out before killing the project. No one said it out loud, but a lot of minds were thinking that would just be throwing good money after bad.

And when someone in the crowd asked how the people in Golden Valley County felt about it — the road on the west side of the bridge would lead into the adjoining county — the response was, “They don’t want it.” To which someone, I think Haag, said, “It’s a bridge to nowhere.” First time I’ve heard those words in a while.

I’m not going to today’s meeting. I’m sure I can get a report on what happened. I’ll keep you posted.

The Little Missouri State Scenic River bottoms on the Short Ranch, site of the proposed Little Missouri River Crossing. The river is off in the distance, below the bluffs. This is the Short Ranch pasture, where the road to the bridge would go. It looks like the cows will stay, and the bridge will not happen. Fingers crossed.