Oklahoma has long been paying far more in federal transportation fuel tax than we ever get back in road construction. With 6 other federal interstate roads being planned for other regions of the nation, it's time for Oklahoma's congressional delegation and our state governor to press the federal government to invest in the heartland in a way that will boost commerce for the world's largest retailer and the recreational industries of the heartland.
  Sooner Politics recommends building the first phase of an interstate highway which could eventually span from Tallahassee, Florida to Las Vegas, Nevada.
  Phase One is a segment from Bentonville, Arkansas to just south of Pueblo, Colorado. It connects to Bartlesville, Ponca City, Enid, Woodward, Guymon, and Trinidad, CO.
  Phase Two will lead eastward to Branson, MO; Jonesboro, AR; and Jackson,TN.
Phase Three will descend southeastward to Huntsville, AL; Columbus, GA; and Tallahassee, FL.
  Phase Four will find a lower elevation pass through the south Rockies and connect Durango, CO; Four Corners, the Grand Canyon; St. George, UT; and bring travelers to Las Vegas, NV.
  The savings to Oklahoma's transit system will be substantive. And Oklahomans traveling to vacation spots will love the time and fuel savings.

 The Commissioner of Health, Terry Cline, spent years committing a felony fraud against the people of Oklahoma. He did so as an appointed agent of the state govt. To that end, the state is guilty of committing a fraud against the people.
Add to that the possibility of collusion by the agency appointed to write the checks, Office of Management & Enterprise Services (OMES) and you have a conspiracy of massive fraud exceeding $30 million dollars (that we know of).
  Now that the board of the Oklahoma Health Dept. has appointed the former Director of OMES to take over the Health Dept., a perfect condition exists for that director to cover his own paper trail and perhaps spare himself of felony charges for collusion in the felony fraud.
  The basic scandal is that the Health dept. spent $30 million+ that we did not authorize through the legislative appropriations. Our own selected representatives have that duty to balance the state checkbook.

Here's a breakdown of the  ​state laws regarding writing checks in excess of the money available at the time the check is written:

  The Oklahoma legislature & governor avoided any hint of dramatics, today, passing the emergency appropriations for human services & health agencies.
  But the special session has additional designs which will be unveiled in the weeks to come.
  One plot being hinted is a resolution to ask the voters to give up their seldom-used power to decide on revenue bills. Our current constitutional language mandates a vote of the people to pass any legislation which increases revenue taken in by the state. The only way the legislature can deny the voters of the right to decide on taxes is by securing 75% of the full body of each chamber of the legislature.
  Sadly, the legislature has opted more for the latter route, not trusting the people to have the maturity to provide a sustaining solution. 
  In a time when the voters are deciding if they are suitably being served by their current elected officials, it seems any support for an initiative to make it easier for the govt. to confiscate more of the limited earnings of the people; will become a litmus test for whether a change is in order, for that legislative district.

  In a bold and wise move, State Auditor & Inspector, Gary Jones, is stopping his own involvement in the audit & investigation of the missing millions of dollars, spent by the former commissioner,  Terry Cline.
  But the far more glaring conflict of interest is still meddling with the books. Preston Doerflinger appears to have violated statutes by certifying in state financial documents that he knows the Health Department is in financial compliance with state laws and proper spending levels.
  When the health Dept. oversight board voted to appoint Doerflinger to the post of acting Commissioner, It allowed Doerflinger unfettered access to the evidence which could lead to his own indictment.
  Steve Anderson of OCPA finds credible data and required statutes which point to gross failures in oversight by both Doerflinger & Jones. That finding is published in installment 4 of our guest series of columns by Anderson.
  We call on Doerflinger to follow Jones' example and step aside from running the Dept. of Health until such time as the courts and House investigators can ascertain the scope of the chronology and determine that Doerflinger might still be fit to serve in any state agency leadership.

  The declared title of Rep. Scott Biggs' bill is the "Impaired Driving Elimination Act 2". Who could vote against that? Right? It smacks of the pontificating of many politicians citing the great powers of justice, prosperity, and loving kindness which will surely commence if only the lawmakers will vote to pass the bill. Never mind the alienation of basic due process that our nation's govt. is founded upon. 
  SB643 calls for the peace officer to immediately destroy a citizen's drivers license if any probable cause of driving impairment is declared by the officer. The court stated that the citizen is therefor deprived of liberty without due process by the act and is no longer allowed to appeal that decision.
  The legislature severely cut the appropriations to the agency which previously had conducted those hearings. Only about 25% of those requesting the hearings were being granted an appointment. Rather than funding the constitutional process, the legislature just eliminated a constitutional right from all of us.
  Rep. Scott Biggs was a house cosponsor, along with Senators Dave Rader and Kim David. The only remedy allowed under the bill was to enroll in a certified education program on the dangers of driving impairment, regardless how high the cost to the citizen.

  Once again, the Oklahoma Council on Public Affairs (OCPA) comes to the rescue of our sanity while even our own governor is entranced in the narrative of the cravings of agencies, lusting for expansion and power.
  Curtis Shelton has published an excellent comparison of which agencies we're really cut (and there are real concerns about some of them); and which agencies are basking in massive new dollars which Democrat legislatures refused in previous decades.
  We've utilized part of their charts to draw attention to their findings. The full research paper is published on their website. Please read it.
  Shelton points out that Gov. Mary Fallin has a compiled 'cheat sheet' of only what the state legislature appropriates to each state agency; rather than the full operational budget of the agencies. By doing so, the expansive federal grants, subsidies, and pass-through dollars are ignored. In addition, the user fees, tuitions, sales of products & services, and other acquired resources are also ignored.
  Some of the cuts are laudable. The OETA needs to operate independent of state subsidies, just as several other educational media outlets are successful in doing.
But our very roads are crumbling while we offer to pay grown adults from other states to come & enroll in our govt. universities.

  Rep Scott McEachin and others are describing this special session as being vastly different from the last one. And this may be the most unified process, at least with the House voting unanimously in the JCAB to advance a pair of funding bills to give the Healthcare Authority and Department of Human Services the needed funds to get by until April without any cuts in services or reimbursement rates.
  No new revenue measures are on the calendar, or even filed with the House Clerk.
  What will be interesting will be the final day. According to constitutional mandates, the legislature has to gavel in & out at least 5 days to read the bills and the executive call to session before the bills can be passed out of a chamber.
  So on Friday there will likely be a unanimous passage of the 2 appropriations bills and perhaps the leadership will personally walk the document directly into the Governor's office and not leave until her signature is certified.
  Only when the legislature is satisfied by witnessing a governor's signature, will they return to their chamber and entertain a motion to end the 2nd Special Session.  That is because the governor has devastated any residual trust the legislature used to have in her word of honor.

  The Oklahoma House leaders have tipped their hand and provided a detailed plan to 'get in & get out', this week. They plan to raise taxes on oil without meeting the 75% threshold stipulated in the Oklahoma constitution.
  The Oklahoma Supreme Court decided that a revenue-raising measure like this is, in fact; not a revenue-raising bill.  They rationalize that the legislature is actually fixing an unintended loophole, like they did when an auto registration bill allowed our car dealers to register cars in another state and then re-register the same new car as a used car when transferring the vehicle back into Oklahoma, as a used car. When that bill's language corrected the unintended loop hole, it effectively raised revenue, but the court said it was merely closing a carve-out special deal to a favored few.
  Well, that act is now being used to close some VERY INTENDED exemptions for vast and broad tax policies. When the state established an excise tax on motor vehicle fuels, they stipulated that it was in the place of a sales tax. Now the corrupted policy allows the legislature to remove the exemptions from sales tax and create an effective double taxation... all the while claiming that it's not a revenue-raising bill.

  The Oklahoma State Dept. of Health Scandal:
  Some background for clarification and some thoughts on Doerflinger and Jones committee testimony... 
A couple posters have questioned why I feel I am qualified to post on this issue. Here is my relevant background.

• I am a CPA who has been audit partner in a private CPA firm. I served in the Budget Office of Frank Keating when we uncovered a series of abuses including executive directors of state agencies exceeding their statutory allowed salaries and the ghost employees at the Oklahoma State Department of Health to name a few.
• I was State Comptroller in Kansas and charged with cleaning up the issues with the SEC indictment for financial fraud and the “material weakness” in the state’s books uncovered by auditors.
• Both of these in addition to multiple other issues of either incompetence or purposeful manipulation occurred during the Sebelius’ years (readers may remember she was in charge of the infamous Obamacare roll out after Obama appointed her head of HHS) which my tenure followed so I have some insight into what an administration without qualified leadership looks like.

 My fellow citizens of Oklahoma the OSDH fraud is even worse than we thought!
We have more data and it is worse than we even thought----and possibly going to become even more troubling for the state’s taxpayers who ultimately will have to pony up the dollars to cover the fraud and incompetency. 
  Now that more and more is coming out on what happened at the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) I am even more convinced that there is a need for a wide scale house cleaning at OSDH, the Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES) and the State Auditor and Inspector’s Office (SAI).
Every one of these entities has culpability and I do not say that without a great deal of regret. There are people at each of these agencies who I know and like personally. That being said that does not change the facts, which documents just released reveal a stunning amount of blatant fraud at OSDH and the high level of incompetency at OMES and SAI.
OSDH’s Chief Financial Officer Mike Romero sent an email that delineated the following issues to OSDH’s Chief Operating Officer in October that was reported on OklahomaWatch’s website Friday evening.

  While the Oklahoma legislature convenes this morning, others in state office are 'going to the mattresses' to survive the Health Dept scandal and in some cases, avoid even more severe outcomes.

  Steve Anderson is a long-time Oklahoman who has served in various govt. accounting & finance roles. He is a former comptroller for the state of Kansas. Anderson is a research fellow at OCPA.
To hear his explanation, both Jones and Doerflinger have failed and are seeking to distract the attention to the other one. Here is some of Anderson's dissertation...

Steve Anderson's writings are a part of Real Fiscal Conservatism in Govt., OCPA, and other publications.

  There was a predator on the campus of the University of Oklahoma. but it was not the younger man from the college football team.
  The prosecutors have made a clear decision and announced their findings.
 The charges made by Courtney Jean Thornton will not be acted upon by the state prosecutor.
  According to her initial complaint, Rodney took advantage of her sexually. 
Thornton went further and got the court to grant her an emergency order of protection upon request. that order put significant restrictions on the student athlete and he had to limit his movement on campus & in the community, until such time as the courts decided to lift it. And Rodney Anderson of Katy, Texas had still not had his day in court nor the right to confront his accuser.
  Worse yet, Thornton issued public statements which further harmed the reputation of the accused in the community.
  The fact is that the woman was wilfully participating on a night on the town, drinking to the point of severe vomiting and eventual unconsciousness, when she went home with the student athlete. Thornton has changed her story a number of times.

 Bixby was once a rural farming community about 30 minutes' drive from central Tulsa. It is now a massive bedroom community which annexed every bit of unincorporated land to the south of Tulsa city limits.
  The school used to have a thriving FFA club which dominated the social activities outside the classroom studies. Now the school is a major force in 6A football.
  Today law enforcement is prosecuting a young female teacher on attempted statutory rape of a young male student.  But this isn't the biggest sex scandal in the school's first semester.
Anna Ruth Lewis, 22, communicated with the student through social media apps, including Instagram and Snapchat, Bixby police said. “The messages included communications about attempting to meet the minor child for oral and physical sex acts,” Officer Jerry Francis states in an affidavit.
The student reportedly told police that Lewis had messaged him through social media. Lewis later sent the student a nude photograph of herself after the student “liked” a photograph of her on Instagram, police said.
“The victim admitted he sent Lewis nude photos after receiving nude photos from Lewis,” Francis states in the affidavit. “The victim reported Lewis asked for the photos.”
Lewis reportedly told investigators that she was “going through a lot and had been drinking a lot,” Francis wrote.

   KOTV news tells the story of a female deputy who put away her handgun and opted for the taser, when a man attacked her with knives.
  When the man begs for her to shoot him, it was clear in her mind that this fella was initiated what is known as "Suicide By Cop". 
  It's one of the hardest things for a career peace officer to deal with. They are met with a crisis and split seconds to react. Self preservation set in and they do as they are trained to. Only in the aftermath investigation do they ever find out exactly what factors set up the lethal outcome.  KOTV's Amy Slanchik provides this story. Please follow it on their media site.