The Pensacola Dam in Langley impounds Grand Lake downstream. What role the dam plays in Miami’s history of damaging floods has been the subject of a decades-long dispute between the town and the Grand River Dam Authority. 

Melinda Stotts, spokeswoman for the City of Miami, said she and city officials are pleased with the federal order. 

“It’s a big win for us,” Stotts said. “We haven’t won the war, but we have won a battle.”

The Grand River Dam Authority could still appeal the order. The agency is currently weighing its options, spokesman Justin Alberty said in a statement.

“The January 18, 2023, order by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) appears to change 85 years of legal precedence,” Alberty said. “If the federal government is committed to providing flood control measures, we believe they need to provide adequate easements.”

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The federal order gives the Grand River Dam Authority 120 days to submit a report on flooding in the upper reaches of Grand Lake, an analysis of land upstream of the dam that is prone to flooding and whether the agency has property rights to those lands.

Then-Sen. Jim Inhofe authored legislation in 2019 that removed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s authority to require the Grand River Dam Authority to purchase additional land affected by flooding. But the new ruling states that federal regulators still have authority to do so under the dam’s current license, which was issued in 1992. 

The Grand River Dam Authority is a non-appropriated state agency established by the Oklahoma Legislature in 1935. It operates and oversees Grand Lake and the Pensacola Dam. The dam is currently undergoing relicensing through federal regulators, and the 1992 license remains in effect. 

The Grand River Dam Authority has been party to numerous lawsuits since the early 90s by property owners in the Miami area who have been flooded. Experts hired by those property owners say that the dam causes a backwater effect in the upper extremities of Grand Lake, where the Neosho, Elk and Spring rivers converge.

In 2018, the City of Miami filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, claiming that the Pensacola Dam had caused repeated flooding on 13,000 acres outside the lake’s current project boundaries and failed to acquire easements for the flooded areas in violation of its license.

The Grand River Dam Authority claimed the dam did not have an impact on upstream flooding, and that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for all aspects of flood control, including purchasing land that might be flooded. The Corps of Engineers told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that while it is responsible for ordering releases from the Pensacola Dam during flood conditions, it falls to the Grand River Dam Authority to acquire lands around the lake impacted by flooding.

Federal regulators rejected the Grand River Dam Authority’s claim that it was not responsible for purchasing lands affected by flooding.

Miami Mayor Bless Parker called the federal order a “good win for our citizens,”

“I grew up in a home that flooded, and I understand the impact, and it’s about time somebody stood up to GRDA,” Parker said. “These facts matter, and this proves the fight for our city and its residents was worth the battle. It’s a huge victory for our citizens and our tribal partners that have suffered the continual flooding for close to 40 years. It’s nice to finally get some traction and to be heard at a federal level. We hope that we’ll get this same attention and support from our current and future state legislature.”

The post ‘Big win for us:’ Federal regulators say the Grand River Dam Authority is responsible for flooding in Miami and failed to acquire affected lands appeared first on The Frontier.

Among the dozens of bills pre-filed for the legislative session that begins Feb. 5, at least two seek to make changes to the Oklahoma Energy Discrimination Elimination Act. The 2022 law requires the State Treasurer’s office to make a list of companies it believes are boycotting the fossil fuel industry. Under the law, state pension systems are required to divest any retiree funds managed by blacklisted firms. State, county and city governments are also not allowed to contract with those companies.

The law leaves it up to the treasurer to decide what financial firms end up on the state’s blacklist, though heavy emphasis is placed on companies with environmental, social and governance investment vehicles. Oklahoma’s law is mostly a word-for-word copy of a Texas law passed a year earlier.

The Frontier reported in May 2023 that the Oklahoma State Treasurer’s office applied criteria for blacklisting companies inconsistently, leaving some firms claiming they have been arbitrarily and wrongly banned from doing business with the state. 

Oklahoma state pension systems said they were not given guidance on implementing the law, and retirees could lose millions if the state were to fully divest from blacklisted companies. At least one municipality said it would have to pay higher interest rates on new bonds.

The list was later pared down to six companies.

The law allows pension funds to claim an exemption if divesting from blacklisted companies would cause them to act against the best financial interests of state retirees. Russ conceded that some of the state’s pension systems may have to take an exemption, but he later criticized the Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System for doing so. Russ’s office later also took an exemption  from the law to continue to do business with Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. 

In advance of the upcoming legislative session, Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, has filed Senate Bill 1536, which would require the State Treasurer’s office to seek an opinion from the state Attorney General if it disagrees with a state agency’s decision to continue to do business with a blacklisted company. 

Rader said the goal is to have a third party arbitrate disagreements between the treasurer’s office and state agencies on how the law is applied. The bill comes out of an interim study at the Oklahoma Capitol in October on the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act.

“There seemed to be confusion as far as the meaning or implementation of the bill,” Rader said. “One of the things that came out of the study is there was not a defined person or process to determine if the law was being followed. You might have the interpretation of the agency and the interpretation of the treasurer and they might not be in sync.

“To me, this was one of the more glaring needs that came out of the study,” he said.

Senate Bill 1510 by Sen. Chuck Hall, R-Perry, would make cities and counties exempt from the law. Hall, who is also CEO and chairman of the Perry-based lender Exchange Bank & Trust Co., did not respond to a phone message at his office.

Jordan Harvey, chief of staff for Russ, said the Treasurer’s Office is watching the bills, but declined to comment on whether the office supports or opposes the measures.

Two other bills introduced last year dealing with the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act didn’t get passed but are still alive, including Senate Bill 469 and Senate Bill 470, both by Sen. Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle. Senate Bill 469 would extend the prohibitions in the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act to state universities and colleges, while Senate Bill 470 would require financial firms to act in the best financial interests of retirees and beneficiaries when they participate in shareholder votes on behalf of public retirement funds.

The deadline to file bills in the Legislature is Jan. 18.

The post Bills seek changes to Oklahoma’s ‘woke’ investment ban appeared first on The Frontier.

The jail has held youth facing charges in tribal and federal court in the past and claims state officials have no authority over those prisoners. 

State inspectors found in 2022 that some of the juveniles were not kept separate from adults. In one case, a juvenile was housed with an adult prisoner, according to an inspection report.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health and the Office of Juvenile Affairs filed separate civil actions in Okmulgee County earlier this month against the trust that runs the Okmulgee County Jail, asking a judge to order the facility to stop housing juveniles until it receives state certification. 

The judge denied the Office of Juvenile Affairs’ motion last week. Eric Stall, an attorney representing the jail, said the State Department of Health’s request for an emergency order to  stop the jail from holding juveniles was also denied because the judge ruled there was no “emergency.” 

“If you believe their allegation about juveniles being housed with adults, that allegation first came to light in July 2022,” Stall told The Frontier. “That was almost 18 months ago.”

The state has notified the court of its intent to appeal.  

“We are disappointed in the judge’s ruling,” said Department of Health spokeswoman Erica Rankin. “The agency is exploring all available options.”

After a federal law change in 2021, all Oklahoma jails lost their certifications to hold juveniles in October, 2021, and the Department of Health notified the jails of the changes in August of that year. Okmulgee County jail officials said they believe the restriction only applies to prisoners who are in state custody, and not those being held at the jail for tribes and federal authorities.

Jails that house juveniles are governed by strict state and federal rules, said Ben Brown, general counsel for the Office of Juvenile Affairs. Youths must be separated from the sight and sound of adult prisoners and are not allowed to be placed in solitary confinement for long periods. Jails are also required to provide time for educational activities, Brown said. 

Juveniles who are housed in adult prisons and jails report being more afraid for their safety and can be at greater risk for physical and sexual assault, some research shows. 

Okmulgee County Jail officials maintain that the facility follows all federal and tribal requirements for holding juvenile prisoners and has a full-time school teacher for youth. 

The state moved to take legal action after jail staff blocked inspectors in November from reviewing records and speaking with juveniles being held at the facility for the Cherokee Nation and U.S. Marshals Service. Julie Hubbard, a spokesperson for Cherokee Nation, told The Frontier last week that Cherokee juveniles were not currently being held in the Okmulgee jail. She did not respond when asked if juveniles would return to the jail in the future.

The Okmulgee County Criminal Justice Authority, which operates the jail, claims it did not bar state inspectors from the jail. Jail officials claim they only told inspectors they could not bring cell phones inside or inspect records for and visit prisoners in tribal or federal custody.

Tim Lawson, director of operations at the Okmulgee County Criminal Justice Authority, told The Frontier the state tried to overstep its bounds. The jail doesn’t house any juveniles in state custody, he said. 

“It was a losing battle for them from the start, in that they had no legal standing as it related to federal juveniles or sovereign tribal juveniles,” he said. 

The Okmulgee County Criminal Justice Authority has repeatedly argued with state officials over access to federal and tribal prisoners and has been cited for violating Oklahoma jail standards, records show. 

State health inspectors dinged the Okmulgee County Jail in 2022 for failing to conduct routine checks on prisoners, unsanitary conditions and fire hazards. An inspection also found that the jail was holding six juveniles for tribal and federal authorities, although the facility was not certified by the state to house minors. A jail administrator also refused to provide information to a Health Department inspector about federal prisoners being housed at the facility, the report states.

Jail officials denied State Health Department inspectors access to federal inmates again during an inspection in August, according to inspection reports. 

Lawson said during the August inspection that health department inspectors demanded access to juveniles held at the jail, which put the jail in an awkward situation with the tribal and federal authorities it has contracts with to house prisoners. 

“They are, for lack of a better term, bullies,”Lawson said. “We will let them talk to them in passing — ‘Hey, how are you being taken care of and fed?’ But we can’t give them an opportunity to get into a case. We’re just protecting them. There’s nobody there on their behalf other than us. We don’t hide anyone from the inspectors when they come through, we give them access, but it’s minimal in that we can’t jeopardize the relationship with those that are paying us to house them.”

Lawson said the jail plans to continue holding juveniles for the tribal and federal authorities.

The post Oklahoma officials claim the Okmulgee jail illegally held juveniles appeared first on The Frontier.

Don Keenan worked at the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission as a disabled veterans employment and senior interviewer from 1985 to 1996, and is also the former head of the Oklahoma Public Employees Association. Keenan filed the lawsuit in Oklahoma County District Court on Monday. 

As a state retiree, Keenan claims in the lawsuit he is opposed to “his retirement benefits being depleted because the State of Oklahoma believes that making political statements with retiree dollars is more important than taking care of retirees themselves.” 

The lawsuit claims the state’s Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, enacted in 2022, violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as well as provisions in the state constitution that require state pension systems operate exclusively for the benefit of their beneficiaries.

The Oklahoma Public Employees Association announced Monday it was working with the Keep Oklahoma’s Promises Coalition — an arm of the National Public Pension Coalition — and the Oklahoma Retired Educators Association to support the lawsuit.

Under the Oklahoma Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, State Treasurer Todd Russ is tasked with determining whether financial institutions are boycotting the fossil fuel industry and putting violators on a blacklist that prohibits business with public retirement funds.

“We will not allow Todd Russ to play politics with state employees and retirees’ money,” said Tony DeSha, OPEA executive director. “The pension system is not taxpayer money, it is compensation earned by active employees who currently pay into the system and the pensioners who contributed to the same system for decades. The decision to pursue legal action against Todd Russ was not taken lightly, but we feel it is necessary to strengthen the fiduciary responsibility of our pension systems.”

Russ said in a statement released through a spokesperson that he was following the law.

“The spirit and intention of the law is to protect Oklahomans and the economic base of the state,” Russ said. “I will be happy to work with the Legislature in the future.”

Most of the governing boards of Oklahoma’s public employee pension systems — the Oklahoma Public Employee Retirement System, the Oklahoma Teachers Retirement System, the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Retirement System, the Oklahoma Police Pension and Retirement System, and the Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System — have expressed concern that divesting from some of its largest retirement fund management firms would end up costing retirees millions of dollars. Meanwhile, other government entities barred from doing business with companies on the blacklist, have said the law is costing them money as well.

Though the state’s Energy Discrimination Elimination Act deals mostly with public pension funds, one section of the law prohibits any government entity from entering into contracts with blacklisted firms, but provides exceptions if doing so would violate an agency’s financial or legal obligations or if a company provides exclusive services.

Earlier this year, Russ said it was likely some exemptions would be allowed for pension and retirement boards over concerns about the cost. 

However, House Speaker Charles McCall replaced two Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System board members after the board voted in August to keep contracts with blacklisted financial firms Blackrock and State Street.

The vote came after the board sought out new investment firms and found a move would cost retirees at least $10 million.

Blackrock and State Street manage roughly a combined 60% of assets for the state’s largest retirement system. Wells Fargo; JPMorgan Chase & Co.; Bank of America and Climate First Bank are also on Russ’s blacklist.

Russ has asked the pension system to issue new requests for proposals, saying the previous attempt was biased and rushed, but the board has thus far refused to budge.

In other states, similar blacklists have been blamed for higher government borrowing costs, and some public pension systems have warned that their retirees could lose tens of millions of dollars each year.

The post A state retiree seeks to overturn Oklahoma’s ‘woke’ investment ban appeared first on The Frontier.

This year, I wrote about chronic flooding in Miami, Okla., and the city’s fight with the Grand River Dam. I pored over decades-old documents to report that officials were aware of the risks of flooding in the area since the 1940s and that one consultant recommended buying out land owners. 

I also took a deep-dive into an Oklahoma law that requires the state Treasurer’s Office to create a blacklist of financial companies deemed to be boycotting the fossil fuel industry. The law prohibits state and local agencies from doing business with companies on the list. My reporting found that many of the companies that initially landed on the blacklist did not meet the criteria in the law to be included. 

Another big story this year was the release of a state audit of federal coronavirus relief money that confirmed much of The Frontier and Oklahoma Watch’s reporting in 2022 about questionable spending. The audit found that special interest groups that now-Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters used to distribute the federal funds gave preferential treatment to some private school parents by allowing early access for application submission. The audit also found that lax state oversight and outsourcing to special interest groups was to blame for misspent money intended to purchase school supplies for kids.

I also reported this year on poultry farms in eastern Oklahoma and how neighbors are blindsided when a mega farm capable of holding hundreds of thousands of chickens at a time moves next door.

We couldn’t have reported any of these stories without financial support from our readers.
Now through Dec. 31, donations to The Frontier will be matched by a collaborative fundraising movement called NewsMatch that supports independent, public-service journalism. We can earn up to $50,000 in matched donations.

The post Your donation helps us report stories that matter for Oklahoma appeared first on The Frontier.

JJ Stitt, who lost the 2022 Republican primary in Senate District 26, just west of Oklahoma City, said he also filed formal complaints with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission against the group. As of yet, the group has not faced any publicly revealed fines or penalties. But the Ethics Commission doesn’t make enforcement actions public unless they vote to release details or take legal action. 

The phantom group, Common Sense Conservatives LLC, resurfaced in the special election for state Senate District 32 near Lawton, this fall, where it spent money on a direct mail advertisement against conservative Baptist minister Dusty Deevers in the Republican primary. 

Records uncovered by The Frontier show that Common Sense Conservatives LLC is one small piece of a larger, nationwide dark money network that conducts most of its operations out of Ohio, has been involved in numerous federal and state-level campaigns in other states including Oklahoma, and has ties to at least one bogus charity. Outside groups that keep their donors secret have a growing influence on Oklahoma elections. Despite some calls for reform, state lawmakers have yet to take any meaningful action. 

Common Sense Conservatives was one of several outside groups that spent at least $227,667 leading up to the Oct. 10 Senate District 32 primary, slightly less than the combined $233,527 that all four candidates in the race spent themselves. And though some of those groups reveal who is funding them, most do not.

In 2020, the Oklahoma Legislature passed a law making it more difficult for voters to see who is behind dark money groups.

This year, Rep. Justin Humphrey, R-Lane, requested an interim study on the flood of seemingly unlimited amounts of anonymous money in Oklahoma’s elections. House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, denied the request, but Humphrey said he hopes to bring the matter up again in the future.

“I think Oklahoma kind of sits around and thinks ‘this is on a national level, on the East Coast or West Coast, that’s in Georgia, that’s in Arizona, it’s not here,’” Humphrey said. “We have people saying our elections are great here and there’s no problems here. Bullshit. We’ve got all kinds of problems. We’ve got big problems. And we need to bring attention to it. We need to know where the money is coming from.”

Independent political organizations spent a record $45.3 million in races around the state during the 2022 election, according to a Frontier analysis of spending records. Nearly two-thirds of the organizations either did not reveal any information at all about donors or hid the true source of funds by passing the money through a tangle of political action committees and nonprofit organizations. 

Deevers, who won the Senate District 23 primary and will face Democrat Larry Bush in the Dec. 12 general election, faced negative attacks by several dark money groups, including one that purchased a television ad during the OU-Texas football game. He also claimed he alerted law enforcement to threatening social media posts against him before the primary. 

“If they are destroying my reputation, and thereby destroying some of my means and livelihood for my family and other people, I think that there needs to be some measure of protection,” Deevers said. “I mean, what do we have, if we don’t have a good reputation? Then it affects our family and our future for potentially generations to come.”

Americans United For Values, a federally-registered Super PAC funded by the national dark money group the American Exceptionalism Institute, also dumped money on negative ads against Deevers and other candidates in the primary. 

The American Exceptionalism Institute was also at the center of a campaign finance scandal in Mississippi and was recently revealed by The Daily Beast to have been the recipient of the lion’s share of a $25,000 donation from QuikTrip co-founder and Tulsa resident Burt Holmes, who told the Daily Beast he was unaware that his donation to a separate group had been steered to a right wing dark money organization. The individual running the Oklahoma-registered Super PAC that Holmes donated to was later fraudulently listed as embattled New York Congressman George Santos’s campaign treasurer.

Both the American Exceptionalism Institute and Commonsense Conservatives are part of the nationwide dark money network based in Ohio.

The Senate District 32 primary was the first time since the 2022 primary election that Common Sense Conservatives LLC purchased an ad in an Oklahoma political race. Common Sense Conservatives sent out mailers to registered Republican voters in Senate District 26 before the June 2022 Republican primary accusing Stitt of animal abuse and domestic violence, neither of which is true, he said.

Stitt, who is not related to Gov. Kevin Stitt, filed a defamation suit against Common Sense Conservatives and three unnamed individuals four days before the primary. He told The Frontier he was forced to drop the lawsuit in August, because none of the individuals behind the group could be identified and the group’s mailing address listed on its filings  — which checks back to a Tulsa supermarket — was invalid. The  group did not file incorporating paperwork with the Oklahoma Secretary of State. Other addresses for the group in Oklahoma City and Ohio have also emerged. 

Stitt said he has mostly given up on trying to find out who was responsible for the group.

“On paper, they showed up four days before the election, and the day after the election everything went away,” he said. 

Common Sense Conservatives’ most recent Ethics Commission filing lists an Oklahoma City address that leads to a private mailbox service.

An Ohio attorney registered Common Sense Conservatives LLC in May 2022, about a month before the Oklahoma Republican primary.

The Ohio attorney, Kimberly Land, was also the registered agent for a bogus charity that allegedly stole $131,000 from donors under the guise of providing bottled water and emergency aid to East Palestine, Ohio, residents after the toxic Norfolk Southern train derailment in February 2023. The Ohio Attorney General is prosecuting that case against the group, The Ohio Clean Water Fund LLC.

Land is also the registered agent for several dark money groups registered in Ohio that participated in elections in other states, including Securing Louisiana’s Future LLC, Freedom Wins LLC, Unify America LLC, Georgia Jobs and Opportunity Alliance LLC, Oklahomans for Patient Care LLC, Coalition to Secure Elections LLC, Give Buckeyes a Voice LLC, Protect Our Freedoms LLC, Integrity Idaho LLC, Citizens Against Cannabis Corruption LLC, Public Safety Alliance of Oklahoma LLC, Real Story of America LLC and the Conservative Integrity Project.

In nearly all cases, Land’s name is the only name listed on the incorporation documents.

Secretary of State records show that Land is also the registered agent for a company named FEC Compliance Group LLC, originally as a trade name for the Clark Fork Group, a political consulting firm out of Columbus, Ohio. The FEC Compliance Group is listed as the employer for the managers of multiple dark money groups.

Joel Ritter, one of Clark Fork Group’s founders, was also listed as the treasurer or head of several PACs, including some that participated in Oklahoma elections.

Land did not return phone messages or emails from The Frontier, and the phone numbers listed by the PACs either did not exist or went to an answering service.

During his State of the State Speech in February to kick off the legislative session, Gov. Kevin Stitt, who was himself the target of dark money attack ads in the 2022 election, called for greater transparency, saying that Oklahomans deserve to know who is funding their elected leaders’ campaigns.

“A democracy is doomed when special interests can spread lies and leverage blank checks to buy elections,” Stitt said.

However, no bills were introduced by lawmakers that session to require more transparency from those groups.

Humphrey said the issue of secret donors financing many of Oklahoma’s public elections first came to his attention in 2018, when Conservative Alliance PAC, a federally-registered Super PAC that masked its donors, began running advertisements against several deeply conservative candidates in 2018. The Oklahoma Ethics Commission sued the group in June 2022 for failing to file disclosure reports.

That case was settled earlier this year for $45,000, a little more than 4% of the total funds the PAC raised during 2018. Such enforcement actions are rare. The Ethics Commission, which was enshrined in the state constitution by a vote of the people in 1990 and receives funding from the Legislature, has a staff of only five with a budget this fiscal year of less than $700,000.

Ethics Commission Director Ashley Kemp, who has announced she will step down in December, told Oklahoma Watch in June that the commission has evidence of campaign finance rules being broken by outside spending groups, but the commission does not have the resources to go after all of them. 

“What you’re seeing is corporate buy legislators,” Humphrey said. “That’s what’s happening. It’s not just nationwide, it’s here in the state of Oklahoma.”

In 2022, Arizona voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure known as the Voters Right to Know Act that would require those groups to publicly disclose the true source of their funds. The ballot measure has survived a court challenge, but faces other challenges from dark money groups and legislative leaders there.

Humphrey said a similar measure may work in Oklahoma.

“The ideal is the same. The ideal is we have transparency,” Humphrey said. “For me, that’s where we have to come back to and say ‘look, we’ve got to come up with where’s this money coming from and who is receiving it. To me, that’s not that hard. Why would anybody disagree with that?

“Right now, it’s murky as mud.”

The post A phantom attack ad group surfaces again in an Oklahoma election appeared first on The Frontier.

Stitt hired Oklahoma City-based attorney Ryan Leonard in 2020 to help address legal issues in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s McGirt decision that found that Congress never disestablished the Muscogee Nation reservation in eastern Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Secretary of State’s office under then-secretary Brian Bingman also contracted with Leonard and paid Stitt’s office nine $10,000-monthly reimbursements. 

State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd issued an audit last week that found the payments from Secretary of State’s office violated state law because they benefitted Bingman in his separate, unfunded position as Stitt’s cabinet secretary for Native American Affairs. A member of the governor’s cabinet is not allowed to bill a state agency for services it doesn’t benefit from, the report found. Invoices to the Secretary of State’s office classified the payments as program reimbursements for litigation costs. But the invoices contained little information about the services Leonard was providing, according to the audit.

Stitt’s office signed a memorandum of understanding with the Secretary of State’s office,  citing state law it claimed allowed for the payments, but Byrd’s audit found that the agreement did not adhere to those laws.

The audit found that the governor’s office didn’t provide the Secretary of State’s office with any labor or equipment or get any benefit from the deal.

The audit recommended that management at the Secretary of State’s office take steps to ensure the office actually receives a service or benefit for payments made to other agencies. 

Bingman has since left the Secretary of State’s office, and is now campaigning to replace the term-limited Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony.

Jeffrey Cartmell, an attorney for the Secretary of State’s Office, said the audit did not uncover any misspending and that Leonard provided services to the office.

“Mr. Leonard’s services were shared between the Office of the Secretary of State and Office of the Governor because of the overlap of responsibilities and duties of the two offices,” Cartmell said. “Utilizing a shared services agreement, which was edited, reviewed, and approved by the Office of the Attorney General, resulted in savings for the state – and the taxpayer.

Specifically, Mr. Leonard acted as a liaison with various tribal leaders throughout the state. His activities for our office were in coordination with the outreach performed by Secretary Bingman.”

Abegail Cave, spokeswoman for Stitt, did not return a phone message seeking comment.

Stitt has recently faced criticism for his use of state money in his legal fights with the tribes. 

In August, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond questioned Stitt’s use of nearly $2 million in tribal gaming compliance unit funds — which come from fees paid the state’s tribes pay to the state as part of gaming compacts. Stitt used the money to pay for outside law firms and attorneys to defend him in lawsuits brought by some of the larger tribes over tribal gaming issues.

Drummond said he was not aware of any law that allows the governor’s office to use those gaming compliance funds for legal defense, though a spokeswoman for Stitt said nothing restricts the funds from being used for that purpose.

In a letter responding to the audit, Bingman said his office did receive services and benefits from Leonard and that multiple attorneys and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office reviewed the memorandum of understanding and said the arrangement complied with state law. Then-Attorney General Mike Hunter signed off on the agreement, the letter said. 

“Mr. Leonard helped the Office fulfill its duty of representing the state to other governments in a variety of ways,” Bingman’s letter states. “This included meeting with tribal leaders and tribal delegations from a wide range of tribal governments during the term of the MOU. Secretary Bingman and staff were kept apprised of Mr. Leonard’s interactions at weekly and bi-weekly meetings where the office would provide Mr. Leonard additional direction.”

Bingman’s letter also said the Secretary of State’s office has historically been the primary representative to foreign and tribal governments.

The post Secretary of State’s office spending on attorney for tribal issues broke the law, state audit finds appeared first on The Frontier.

Canoo’s latest deal for up to $7.5 million in cash from the Governor’s Quick Action Closing Fund omits an earlier requirement for the company to purchase a factory in Oklahoma City to collect any of the incentive money. The company had been facing a deadline later this month to purchase the facility or lose out on the incentives. 

The Quick Action money is part of more than $113 million in incentives Canoo is eligible to collect through state tax breaks, economic development incentives and a Cherokee Nation job training program. 

Oklahoma Department of Commerce spokeswoman Becky Samples said Oklahoma’s latest incentive package is only the first round of funding. Once Canoo meets all of the benchmarks in its most recent agreements, future incentives are not out of the question, Samples said.

Canoo has yet to collect any state money, because all of the deals have been contingent on the company hitting hiring and development goals that haven’t been met. 

In 2021, Canoo announced that Oklahoma had pledged incentives valued at $300 million to help build a vehicle production facility at the Mid-America Industrial Park in Pryor and hire 1,500 workers. The state-run industrial park offered incentives including land and infrastructure for the factory. Canoo also said it would develop a tech hub in Tulsa that would create 700 new jobs in the fields of software development, research, customer support and financing. 

In early 2022, Canoo signed deals to receive up to $15 million in cash from the Quick Action Closing fund to help create jobs in Pryor and Tulsa. Canoo’s deal was the largest the state had ever pledged since the Quick Action program was created in 2011.

But Canoo missed a deadline to start construction on the Pryor factory by January 2023, losing out on the opportunity to collect up to $10 million of the Quick Action money. While plans for a Canoo battery factory in Pryor are still moving forward, the larger vehicle manufacturing plant is on hold for now, said David Stewart, chief administrative officer for the Mid-America Industrial Park

Stewart said that the industrial park is still a long-term partner with Canoo, and the 400-acre plot of land that it offered the company during the first incentive package is still available, should it decide to go forward with a vehicle production factory there.

“Basically, the site is still there, we haven’t deeded it or transferred it to anyone,” Stewart said. “And we’re there when Canoo is ready to be supportive and deal with it at that time.”

Canoo’s contract for the other $5 million chunk of Quick Action money to create jobs at the Tulsa tech hub has also been canceled. Chris Moore, vice president of Canoo, said the Tech Hub still remains part of Canoo’s future plans.

In late 2022, Canoo’s shifted its plans to buy an existing factory site owned by the company Terex in Oklahoma City and launch manufacturing there. 

The state made two new Quick Action agreements with Canoo in February, promising a combined $7.5 million to create 1,200 new jobs at the Pryor battery plant and the Oklahoma City factory. There was a catch, however — Canoo would be required to close on the purchase of the Terex facility by Aug. 20.

The Terex property was later purchased by AFV Partners, a separate company owned by Canoo CEO Tony Aquila and leased to Canoo under a 10-year agreement. The lease arrangement helped ease financial strain on the company, Aquila told investors. 

Canoo has yet to turn a profit and has also faced cash shortage as it tries to ramp up production. 

The new Quick Action Closing Fund agreement with Canoo, which overrides the previous ones, offers up to $7.5 million in exchange for creating 1,362 new jobs with an average wage of $60,512 and a capital investment of $321.6 million by Canoo over a period of 10 years. The agreement would provide Canoo with $1 million if it creates 100 jobs this year.

Canoo can also receive up to $40 million from the state’s Quality Jobs Program over a period of 10 years. The deal is subject to the company generating $2.5 million in new gross taxable payroll within three years on jobs that pay at least $40,472 a year and at least 340 full-time jobs with average salary of $60,512.

During Monday’s call with shareholders, Aquila told investors that the company was entering a “new era” after settling charges with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for $1.5 million on Aug. 4 in connection with misleading revenue revenue projections under two former executives. 

The settlement has helped put the company in a stronger financial position moving forward, Aquila said. 

“This has been a significant burden on the company’s time, resources, and the process has taken us 28 months and millions of dollars, which reduced our ability to access the capital markets into higher cost channels during this period because of perceived uncertainty,” Aquila said.

The company currently has $3 billion in orders booked, he said, 70% are from commercial customers. 

Oklahoma awarded Canoo a no-bid contract  in 2022 to purchase up to 1,000 of its electric vehicles over five years. The deal could be worth as much as $35 million to $50 million over the life of the deal, but it’s still unclear how many vehicles state agencies will actually buy. Canoo has yet to start full-scale production. 

Canoo could also be in line to collect millions more in local and federal incentives. 

The company is finalizing an agreement with Oklahoma City for a $1 million incentive from the city’s Strategic Investment Program to help Canoo create 550 jobs. 

The company’s battery production facility in Pryor also could be eligible for around $35 million in federal tax credits annually, said Jacob Whiton, researcher for Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center that promotes corporate and government accountability in economic development.

A breakdown of Canoo’s most-recent $113- million incentive package

• $40 million in Quality Jobs Program payroll incentive payments over 10 years
• $7.5 million from the Governor’s Quick Action Closing Fund
• $28 million from Oklahoma’s Investment/new Jobs tax credit
• $19.7 million from state sales and use tax exemptions on machinery and equipment
• $5.4 million from the state freeport tax exemption
• $7.9 million from sales and use tax exemption on energy used in manufacturing
• $1.9 million from the Oklahoma Training Incentive Program
• $1.7 million from the state’s automotive engineer tax credit
• $663,312 from the Cherokee Nation’s workforce development program 
• A to-be-determined amount from the state’s sales and use tax exemption for goods consumed during manufacturing

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At the monthly GRDA Board of Directors meeting on Wednesday in Langley, the board unanimously approved entering into a $136-million contract with Mitsubishi Power America for the purchase of a 420-megawatt generating unit and a $75-million, 12-year service agreement with Mitsubishi. 

The offer from Mitsubishi Power also includes options, not included in Wednesday’s approved contract, for Mitsubishi Power to upgrade the unit to allow for a hydrogen-natural gas fuel mix in the future. 

The contracts are still pending final approval from the GRDA CEO and general counsel.

The new natural gas-fired unit will replace the Energy Center’s Unit 2, a 492-megawatt coal-fired generator that came online in 1985. The coal-fired generator had several issues over the years, including a fire in 2016 that caused between $80 million and $200 million in damage.

The increasing regulatory requirements on coal-fired plants, including limits on emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and coal-ash waste disposal are driving up costs, said Robert Ladd, vice president of generation operation at GRDA.

The old coal-fired unit would likely not be able to meet new federal requirements that are nearing finalization for Oklahoma  power plants on nitrous oxides, the chemicals partially responsible for smog and acid rain. An updated scrubber, a device that reduces emission pollutants, on Unit 2 would likely cost more than $250 million.

Finally, Unit 2 is considered “uninsurable,” Ladd said.

“There’s a lot of risk in that operation and it continues to be uninsurable today,” Ladd said. “It’s exposed to the highest degree of regulatory uncertainty, lacks the operational flexibility that’s needed for the market, has the highest expense across all of our GRDA-owned fleet, and also carries the most inherent risk, operational and financial.”

According to slides presented at Wednesday’s meeting, the new generation unit is expected to be installed just east of the Grand River Energy Center’s Unit 3, a combined cycle natural gas-fired generator that went online in 2017. 

The $465 million combined cycle natural gas-fired Unit 3 came online in 2017, and was considered one of the most advanced generators of its kind.

Construction on the Unit 4 project is expected to begin in January 2024, and is expected to be up and running by April 2026.

As part of the deal with Mitsubishi Power, workers would also provide upgrades to Unit 3, allowing it to get an additional 13 to 14 megawatts of power, Ladd said. 

The new unit would be a simple-cycle unit, meaning it takes only minutes to fire up and begin generating electricity, Ladd said, compared to Unit 3, which can take hours to get fully up and running.

GRDA President and CEO Dan Sullivan said he has already had meetings with bond underwriters for the project. Many of the details are still being worked out, he said, but he hopes to have a deal in place by December.

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Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said he is looking into whether the funds were properly used to pay for legal counsel for Gov. Kevin Stitt in several lawsuits.

More than $1.9 million in gaming compliance program funds was paid to outside law firms representing the governor in legal actions over the past three years. The figure, which is more than previously reported, comes from state payment records reviewed by The Frontier.

The money to pay legal fees came from the state’s gaming compliance fund, a separate pot of money from the exclusivity fees the tribes pay the state for the rights to run gaming operations in Oklahoma. Tribes pay more than $1 million a year into the gaming compliance fund.

One of the architects of the model gaming compact Oklahoma voters approved in 2004 told The Frontier and KOSU that Stitt should have gotten approval from the Legislature before using the money for lawsuits with the tribes. 

Attorney Scott Meacham worked under Gov. Brad Henry as secretary of finance and revenue and then State Treasurer and helped negotiate the original gaming compacts with the tribes nearly 20 years ago. Gaming compliance money is not intended to be used for legal fees for outside litigation to negotiate a new compact, he says.

Meacham went further and said that tribes who remit money to the state could take legal action if they believe the money is not being used for its original intent.

“Because that’s a contract between the tribe and the state, the tribes could have a cause of action against the state now for potential misuse of those funds,” Meacham said. 

Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for Drummond, said the Attorney General’s Office isn’t aware of any legislative approval to support using the money to pay legal fees. 

“This is a matter of interest and concern that he intends to explore further,” Bacharach said in a statement. 

Abegail Cave, a spokeswoman for Stitt, said the payments to law firms is a proper use of the money and language in the state’s model gaming compact with the tribes allow for it. Cave said Stitt’s predecessor Gov. Mary Fallin also used some of the money to pay for legal fees from gaming-related lawsuits with tribal governments, but did not provide specific examples. 

“Use of the funds is not restricted, and to the extent anyone were to stretch to argue a restriction should be read into the compact, current and historic usage would still be appropriate,” Cave said. 

Matt Morgan, chairman of the Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association, said the money can be used for litigation, but only in certain circumstances. 

Morgan, an attorney and former gaming regulator, said state regulators are obliged under the model gaming compact to try to resolve issues with the tribes before going to court. He said he believes Stitt’s use of the funds is unlawful and not in the spirit of the gaming compact.

Compliance fees are supposed to be used for oversight and to hire accountants and other staff to pore over the books of gaming operations. If the state needs to hire attorneys to ensure a tribal nation is in compliance with the compact, money could be spent on that. 

“If you have to hire a lawyer related to that purpose, I think that would be within what that was intended for,” Morgan said. 

Last week, Drummond announced he was going to take over representation of the state in a federal lawsuit in Washington D.C. brought in 2020 by the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Citizen Potawatomi tribes against the U.S. Department of Interior, Stitt and tribal officials from a few, relatively smaller tribes that signed new gaming agreements with the governor. The larger tribes argue the gaming compacts those smaller tribes signed with Stitt, who was being represented by outside attorneys in the case, are not valid. They point to the Oklahoma Supreme Court Ruling  in 2020, which sided with the legislative leaders, who were advised by then Attorney General Mike Hunter that the compacts were not valid. 

Oklahoma Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat and House Speaker Charles McCall both wrote letters in July supporting Drummond’s intervention in the case.

Drummond wrote in a letter to Stitt dated July 25 that the cost to defend that lawsuit was squandering state funds and harming state-tribal relations.

“Oklahoma’s relationship with our tribal partners has suffered greatly as a result of your divisive rhetoric and refusal to follow the law,” Drummond wrote to Stitt. “The citizens you were elected to serve are the ones who suffer from this irresponsible approach. Instead of working in partnership with tribal leaders to enact compacts that benefit all four million Oklahomans, you insist on costly legal battles that only benefit the elite law firms you hire. Millions of dollars of state resources have been squandered on these futile efforts.”

For that lawsuit alone, the state has spent nearly $600,000 on attorneys fees. Records show the state paid the law firm of Ryan, Whaley, Coldiron, Jantzen and Peters $184,013. Another $17,311 went to the firm Troutman, Pepper, Hamilton, Sanders for their work defending Stitt in the Washington D.C. lawsuit brought by some of Oklahoma’s largest tribes. The state also paid the white-shoe Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell $394,900 to defend Stitt.

But other lawsuits filed against Stitt over the tribal gaming issue pushes the total fees paid to outside attorneys from gaming compliance funds over the past three years to more than $1.9 million.

State vendor payment records show Stitt began paying Ryan, Whaley, Coldiron, Jantzen and Peters, and several other law firms, using gaming compliance unit funds starting in early 2020 for other lawsuits against Stitt involving tribal gaming.

In February of 2023, lawyers received more than $180,000 in fees for legal representation. 

Records show from March 2020 through fiscal year 2023, Ryan, Whaley, Coldiron, Jantzen and Peters was paid about $1.2 million from the state’s tribal gaming compliance unit. During that time, the firm represented Stitt in a 2020 lawsuit brought against him by several of the tribes after negotiations for new gaming compacts broke down. The firm also represented Stitt in two lawsuits legislative leaders Treat and McCall filed against him in June and July 2020 over tribal gaming matters. 

Vendor records also show the state paid $282,609 from gaming compliance funds to the Oklahoma City firm Lytle, Soule & Felty, which represented Stitt in the lawsuit brought by several of the tribes in January 2020 after negotiations on the gaming compacts broke down. 

In addition to the $394,900 paid to Sullivan & Cromwell and the $17,311 to Troutman, Pepper, Hamilton, Sanders, other firms paid from state gaming compliance funds include Washington state-based Perkins Coie, which received $9,975 after being briefly hired by Stitt for compact negotiations with the tribes in early 2020, according to state vendor data. A few weeks later, after the tribes filed suit against Stitt, he announced that Perkins Coie was no longer handling the case and that the Ryan, Whaley and Lytle, Soule, Felty firms had been hired to represent him. 

The state’s vendor data also shows that between fiscal years 2020 and 2022, monthly $8,285 payments totaling $256,835 went from the gaming compliance unit to the governor’s office. Caden Cleveland, spokesman for OMES, said those funds help pay the salary of the Governor’s general counsel as a shared resource to help navigate compliance issues, an arrangement that previous administrations also had.
The state gaming compliance program was created after Oklahoma voters approved Class III gaming in 2004.  The fund originally operated under the Office of State Finance but was later folded into the Office of Management and Enterprise Services. Tribes that have gaming compacts with the state pay a one-time $50,000 startup fee into the compliance fund, as well as an annual  $35,000 annual fee on top of gaming exclusivity fees the tribes pay the state that fund education, mental health and other government programs.

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