Agency Mismanagement Leads To Cuts In Services To Needy

   You know it's bad when the veteran bureaucrat of 3 administrations  resigns on the day he calls in the State Auditor & Inspector.
  What looks like a page from the Bernie Madoff playbook, is happening in the State Health Department. the now-disgraced former commissioner ran out of accounts to juggle money from.
   On October 31st, Terry Cline resigned effective immediately. He had been a top-level agency leader of various agencies, going back to the Keating administration and his 2 successors. Cline has had a bad reputation for his instability in working with corporate contractors who provided various health services to the state. He is known to announce radical cuts in reimbursement with little notice.
   State Auditor, Gary Jones, said that the audit will take months to complete. It appears from all signs that we will not be pleased with the reality of that report.

The Governor Quit Ordering Audits Of Her Govt.

  Yesterday, Rep. John Bennett renewed his call for a sweeping and rigorous regimen of agency audits. In the debate over yet another tax revenue increase which the House is disguising as "closing a carve-out exemption", Bennett decried the lack of legislative oversight of our bulging agency budgets, and their incessant desperation narrative for yet more.
 Jamison Faught of the Muskogee Politico points to a new commission of the legislature, to oversee quadrennial audits of the top 20 agencies. ​

The governor signed the bill, but hasn't yet appointed members so that the commission can get started. 
​Incidently, the Democrats in both houses voted against this new auditing process. One can wonder why they would not want agencies scrutenized for inefficiencies, corruption, and waste?

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  Despite the narrative in left-wing media, Oklahoma's state govt. appropriations have only had one real decrease in the past 15 years. That economic disaster happened when Obama's policies exacerbated the market crash of 2008. Fiscal Year 2010 & 2011 were painful, but by 2012 that real cut was just a memory, and Oklahoma govt. has been growing  faster than the prosperity of the people whose taxes are raised to pay for the government growth.
  Almost all taxes in Oklahoma are assessed as a percentage, creating a dynamic where the govt. grows only when the people can afford to support that growth. even then, a 'rainy day' fund helps take the bite out of market corrections that the economy sustains.

This chart from the Governor's office shows that Oklahoma govt grew in the period leading up to the market crash, even though tax rates were not increased. The growth in govt. came as the people prospered and were able to fund govt. services.

Back to the Health Dept. Scandal...
​  Patrick Riley of the Lost Ogle caught these comments from Auditor, Gary Jones...

​“We’ve heard a lot of figures bantered around. I think that probably what we’re looking at right now is probably a number higher than that,” Jones said.

Jones said they will go through the accounting system; determine what money went where, if it was used improperly and who made the decisions.  He said they won’t know exactly what they’re dealing with until the audit is complete.

“It could be them in turn trying to balance their books by moving money from one account to another thinking that they can have the ability to pay it back at another time. It could be that there was fraud committed and somebody in turn took money and put it in their pockets,” Jones said.  He added that the resignations come at unusual time in the audit.
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“Usually, we see resignations at the end of an audit, not the beginning of an audit,” he said. “Once we start issuing our reports and once the information starts coming out, that’s when we generally see the resignations or the indictments.”

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