Sviggum reportedly still waiting on advisory opinion about gubernatorial bid

That’s the word this morning from Steve Sviggum’s office at the Department of Labor and Industry. As we noted a few weeks back, the DLI commissioner and former GOP House speaker put his run for governor on hold after learning that his role in administering federal Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) funds might disqualify him from running for partisan office under the terms of the Hatch Act.

Sviggum, who’s currently attending a conference in Salt Lake City, requested an advisory opinion on the matter from the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Counsel (OSC) in mid-July. An OSC rep tells PIM that the status of the request is treated as private information, but adds that "we try to respond to these requests in weeks, not months."

An adverse OSC opinion would likely keep Sviggum out of the fast-developing governor’s race. He has expressed reluctance to leave his post in the near term, saying in July that "I hadn’t thought about [leaving the DLI job] 16 months ahead of the election. That’s a long time." Some observers think the question of securing Sviggum’s state pension may be a consideration; state of Minnesota pension levels are determined partly on the basis of the highest-paid five-year span in an employee’s tenure.