State Auditor & Inspector, Gary Jones (R-Cache) spoke to the Edmond Kiwanis Club about his plan to stay engaged in Oklahoma government and managing the finances of the state. The Edmond Sun filed an informative report.
 Jones said his future will include a bid to run for state treasurer. He would ask the governor, whoever that may be, to appoint him as head of OMES. “You see they now have all this money in performance review teams that is my expertise,” he said. | State Auditor and Inspector Gary Jones said his office at the state Capitol will not budge from the building. He said a group of bureaucrats have decided that a constitutionally elected officer will be evicted from the Capitol. On Monday Jones was informed by Capitol Projects Manager Trait Thompson and Finance Secretary Preston Doerflinger that the office will relocate to another facility. Jones was told the move is due to reconfiguration work meant to meet the need for more space at the state Capitol during its renovation process, Jones said Wednesday before the Edmond Kiwanis. “A little kink in their plans is that Article 6 of the Constitution says that these certain constitutional offices will be housed at the seat of government,” Jones said. “And there’s an Attorney General’s opinion that says the seat of government is the state Capitol.” Club President Al Warren said he knows Jones as a tell-it-like it is guy who has put the spotlight on several members of our state government. His office is the elected watchdog for the citizens of Oklahoma. It will take a Supreme Court ruling and eviction notice to move the elected Office of State Auditor and Inspector, he said. |
Jones said the Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES) is the group that would take over the space of the office he leads. OMES is not mentioned in the State Constitution as being in the state Capitol, he said. If any office should be housed elsewhere it should be OMES, Jones added.
The state has created a bureaucracy that is an inefficient “monstrosity” that produced state pay raises when the state is freezing other wages, Jones said.
“We elect all these people and they get up there and talk about believing in smaller, more efficient government,” Jones said. “But what we’re seeing today is the footprint of the state Capitol, the House and the Senate, gets bigger and bigger.”
Twenty years ago the building housed the Oklahoma Supreme Court, the Office of Attorney General and many other agencies.
“But now since these small government Republicans have taken over they now have continued to expand,” said Jones, former chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party for six years.
Jones said every architectural plan he has seen this year until this week showed that his office would be kept with modifications. He had had been told a stairwell would negate three office spaces. People would be displaced in the basement with additional space in the former office of Secretary of State that had once been part of the auditor’s office, he understood.
“We could just reopen the door that was already there that had been closed off,” Jones continued.
Jones said the majority of senators and representatives at the Capitol are good people, but many of them are not in leadership positions.
Jones said his future will include a bid to run for state treasurer. He would ask the governor, whoever that may be, to appoint him as head of OMES.
“You see they now have all this money in performance review teams that is my expertise,” he said.
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