Enel North America is eying the Tulsa Port of Inola as a potential site for the plant, which would create an estimated 1,500 jobs. 

Oklahoma is the leading candidate to land the facility and Enel is “excited about the possibility to expand our presence in the state,” Giovanni Bertolino, the head of Enel North America’s 3Sun USA solar panel affiliate, told The Frontier in a statement.

Stitt told a group of visitors to the Oklahoma Capitol on Wednesday the state was on “the one-yard line” to land a major economic development deal, but he needs the Legislature on board to make it happen.

“These guys are ready to go,” Stitt told The Frontier after the speech. “Sometimes, as we get close to May, things are kind of tied to other things and I wish it wasn’t like that, but that’s the nature of politics.”

State economic development officials have named efforts to recruit Enel “Project Sirius.”

Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat said that landing the company would require a smaller, but similar incentive package to a $698-million package the state has offered previous companies. Treat declined to go into further detail about specific amounts or terms of any deal. He said Senate leadership supports the plan and sent Stitt a letter bolstering that sentiment on Wednesday.

The terms of the deal would have to be approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor. The earliest that could happen would be next week.

A disagreement over tax cuts has stalled things. House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, said the House needs to have tax cuts in order to give Enel incentives, while the Senate does not want to cut taxes.

McCall said the House is ready to help the governor and do what is necessary to land Enel, but he “sees tax cuts or some relief necessary for the people of Oklahoma,” and if the state is going to go along with large incentive packages for big companies they “can’t forget about the everyday taxpayer.”

But Senate leadership has made clear they don’t want to cut taxes this year and want to see the incentives pass on their own.

“We’re not going to agree to any other unrelated bill to get this through,” Treat said. “We are agreeing to get an economic development project landed and do what that takes, but no ancillary issues tied to it.”

Stitt spoke to the House Republican Caucus at a closed-door emergency meeting on Thursday morning to iron out details of incentives for Enel.

The post International clean energy company eyes Oklahoma as lawmakers weigh incentives  appeared first on The Frontier.

Walters’ path to confirmation in the state Senate was looking bleak with a number of Senators acknowledging to The Frontier it was unlikely he would get the 25 votes necessary to be confirmed. The state Senate is required to confirm the Governor’s appointments to his cabinet, and 25 votes are required in order to be confirmed. 

The state Senate has until the end of session to vote on appointments. 

Stitt’s decision to continue paying Walters an additional $40,000 a year as Secretary of Education drew criticism from both sides of the aisle as Walters makes just over $120,000 as state superintendent.

In a statement Tuesday, Stitt announced the appointment of Dr. Katherine Curry, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University in the College of Education and School of Educational Studies, to be his new Secretary of Education. There was no mention of Walters in his statement.

“Katherine brings a wealth of experience to oversee the many different areas of education across the state, including higher education and career tech. I look forward to her leadership and service as we work towards making Oklahoma a Top Ten state in education,” Stitt said in the statement.

Curry said she is “excited to partner with Governor Stitt” in making education in Oklahoma Top-10. 

The news that Walters had been replaced came while he was participating in a Statewide Virtual Charter School Board Meeting, where he is an ex-officio non-voting member. The board was discussing whether or not to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would have offered online classes for K-12 students. It would have created the first taxpayer-supported religious charter school in the nation. The board voted down the proposal, but a Reuters story noted the church has a 30-day window to make changes to its application.

Walters, speaking to reporters after the meeting, said he was excited to add someone to “the team,” but did not say whether he resigned or was asked to step down. 

“We’re very excited to have her on the team,” he said. “The Governor and I are going to continue working to make us top 10 in every aspect of education.” 

Walters was named Secretary of Education in September 2020, more than two years before he was elected as state Superintendent of Public Instruction. 

Prior to his political career, Walters taught in the McAlester Public School system where he was named Teacher of the Year in 2016. Walters resigned from teaching in 2019, and transitioned to nonprofit work, serving as Executive Director of Oklahoma Achieves, a nonprofit education organization created by the Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce. 

He later moved to the nonprofit “Every Kid Counts Oklahoma,” where he served as executive director until stepping down earlier this year.
Walters’ school-choice views are unpopular with many educators, but the political newcomer was elected in a landslide in November, defeating educator Jena Nelson by more than 150,000 votes.

The post As hopes of confirmation wane, Governor replaces Ryan Walters as Secretary of Education appeared first on The Frontier.

The Office of Management and Enterprise Services’ central purchasing division didn’t review at least $3 billion in purchases that state agencies claimed were exempt from oversight during the 2022 fiscal year, according to a report the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency released Thursday.  

State agencies failed to cite any specific reason for more than $2 billion of the exempt purchases. Central purchasing does not vet purchases to ensure they actually qualify for an exemption — it just takes the agency’s word for it, the report found.  

The figures include over $1 billion in expenditures from the Oklahoma Department of Transportation. The agency’s work on roads and bridges falls outside of state purchasing laws. 

Central purchasing usually handles the acquisition, bidding, evaluation and legal aspects of state agency purchases. But a number of exemptions in state law allow agencies to circumvent the process. 

And state agencies are increasingly claiming exemptions from procurement rules intended to provide oversight on how taxpayer money is spent. Adjusted for inflation, purchases state agencies claimed as exempt nearly tripled between fiscal years 2012 and 2022, with the vast majority of that increase occurring after 2018.

These figures don’t include purchases made by some of the largest agencies, including the Oklahoma State Department of Education and the State Department of Health, because they do not report spending through the statewide accounting software. 

The report blamed the lack of spending scrutiny for the Foggy Bottom Kitchen scandal at the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department in 2022. Unreviewed payments to the restaurant company ballooned to over $17 million. Tourism officials claimed exemptions on payments to Swadley’s for management fees, construction expenses, and equipment used to produce food, so central purchasing staff did not review any of the spending. This lack of oversight occurred despite warnings from an internal auditing team at the Office of Management and Enterprise Services that found the Tourism Department wasn’t following state procurement laws when buying items with state purchasing cards, the report found.

This lack of oversight has also led to state agencies signing an increasing number of government contracts without competitive bidding.

Between the 2019 and 2022 fiscal years, state agencies signed $1.1 billion worth of sole-source contracts, which can be awarded without a competitive bidding process, according to the report. State agencies signed the same amount of no-bid contracts over the previous seven years.

State law requires agencies to fill out a form and attach it to the purchase for no-bid contracts, but no outside entity verifies those transactions, according to the report. 

At his weekly press conference, Gov. Kevin Stitt said he supports legislation to do away with all exemptions to state procurement rules.

Stitt said he believes all state contracts should be awarded competitively. 

“Every single contract should have an RFP (request for proposal) and it should be an open bidding process, ” Stitt said.

The Office of Management and Enterprise Services agreed with most of the findings in the report, but argued in its official response that it is barred from questioning whether agencies qualify for exemptions. 

According to state law, the state purchasing director “shall have sole and exclusive authority and responsibility for all acquisitions used or consumed by state agencies.” 

State purchasing director Dan Sivard, resigned from his position the day before the oversight report was released. Caden Cleveland, the spokesperson for the Office of Management and Enterprise Services, said his resignation had nothing to do with the impending report.

The post State agencies spend billions in taxpayer funds with little oversight and the numbers are growing, report finds appeared first on The Frontier.

Oklahoma currently ranks in the bottom ten states when it comes to residents with access to highspeed broadband. So state lawmakers created the Oklahoma Broadband Office in 2022 with the goal of bringing high-speed broadband to 95% of Oklahoma households by 2028. The Legislature sent the new state agency $382 million of the state’s $1.87 billion share of federal relief money from the American Rescue Plan Act funds to help accomplish that mission.

In November, the Broadband Governing Board voted to send $19.9 million of federal relief money to the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety to help upgrade its telecommunication system and towers for first responders in 21 counties. State lawmakers had previously declined to hear the Department of Public Safety’s request for federal relief funding, putting it aside until a larger plan could be hammered out to upgrade all state-owned telecommunication towers. 

Department of Public Safety officials said they never asked the Broadband Office for the money.

“We thought it was a dead issue after the Legislature said ‘no,’” said Sarah Stewart, a spokeswoman for the agency. 

Mike Fina, chairman of the Broadband Office board, said the Department of Public Safety did not specifically request the money from the Broadband Office. He said he saw the project on the state portal for relief funding proposals and legislators encouraged him to pull it out and fund it. But he declined to provide names. 

“I really don’t want to escalate this, so I prefer not to use any legislator’s names,” he said.

Fina, who was appointed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, said no one from the executive branch asked him for the funding. 

Legislators in charge of the committee distributing the state’s American Rescue Plan funds said they didn’t discuss the emergency responder funding with Fina and were unaware of the agency’s decision to divert federal money to it.

Upon learning of the project at the Joint Committee on Pandemic Relief Funding meeting last week, state lawmakers expressed confusion about why the Broadband Office sent money intended to expand public high-speed internet access to the Department of Public Safety. 

Kirk Martin, the interim director of the agency, told the committee that Fina was encouraged to fund the project by “legislative leaders.”

“I’m not aware of anybody in leadership — and we’ve been polling people — in the House or the Senate that had conversations along those lines,” Sen. Chuck Hall, R, Perry, told The Frontier. 

Hall told Oklahoma Broadband executives during the meeting last week that the Legislature had made it “very clear” they do not support using federal relief money on the tower upgrades for the Department of Public Safety. 

Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City; House Speaker Pro Tempore Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow; a spokesperson for House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka and the co-chairs of the committee on relief funding, Rep. Kevin Wallace, R-Wellston, and Sen. Roger Thomspon, R-Okemah, all said they were unaware of the diverted funds. 

Thompson said he is “digging into” what happened and believes there was some major miscommunication. 

House Majority Floor Leader Jon Echols, R-Oklahoma City, also said he has no clue who instructed Fina to send money to the Department of Public Safety. 

“Who called Mike Fina?” Echols said to The Frontier following the meeting. “If somebody called him and told him to do a proposal that wasn’t approved, who did it? Those are my questions and I don’t understand how we got to this point.”

Preston Lay, a legislative liaison for the Department of Public Safety, said the agency did not ask the Broadband Office for funding and assumed any request for money would instead have to go through the regular state appropriations process. Lay said he was notified in December that the agency’s request for federal relief money was being rerouted to the Broadband Office. Fina later told him the money would be ready in January.

The director of the Department of Public Safety’s wireless information network gave a presentation at the meeting before the Broadband Office approved the funds. Stewart said Fina asked the agency to provide the information. 

A spokesperson for the Broadband Office said the Department of Public Safety has already pulled down nearly half of the relief money, about $8.9 million. According to the state’s ARPA tracking system, of the $382 million allocated, the only funds the Broadband Office has disbursed is the $8.9 million to the Department of Public Safety.

Stewart said the department has not yet expended the funds, but there are “invoices out for purchases concerning that money.”

Members of the Legislature want the Department of Public Safety to hold off on spending anymore.

Fina told The Frontier that he had been aware of the need to upgrade communication towers for emergency responders for nearly 20 years and believed sending the relief money for the project would be a good way to help. Fina said his office has followed all state and federal rules on how the relief money should be spent. 

He said he would look at pulling back the funds if the Legislature requested it. But it would be hard to get the money back because some of it has already been drawn down and has contracts attached to it, he said. 

“We funded a really great project that’s going to protect first responders,” Fina said. “That’s what I’m going to hang my hat on. And if the legislature wants us to pull that back, we will review that and see if that’s even possible.”

This is just the latest scrutiny the Broadband Office has come under in the past month.

The Oklahoma Broadband Board recently came under fire for not having the minutes from two previous meetings, when members discussed hiring a new executive director. The board also faced pressure to hire the governor’s preferred candidate for the job.

The post Millions of dollars meant to boost broadband access in Oklahoma has gone to emergency responders instead appeared first on The Frontier.

But when news broke that Volkswagen picked Canada instead, it marked the third time in less than three years that a major company had passed over Oklahoma.

In 2020, Oklahoma tried to entice the electric vehicle company Tesla to open a factory in Tulsa. But key Tesla executives said they would prefer to live in Austin,Texas. 

Last year, it was Panasonic. Oklahoma tried to lure the Japanese-based company to build a battery plant in Pryor using a nearly $700-million incentive package. But, even this massive amount wasn’t enough to compete with larger incentives offered by Kansas.

Some officials blame a combination of a lack of qualified workers, infrastructure and incentives that haven’t kept pace with other states. Others say Oklahoma’s conservative politics are holding the state back, including a near-total ban on abortion and pending legislation to restrict gender-affirming care. 

A new bipartisan select committee in the Oklahoma state Senate will look to examine some of these root causes. 

“I share a frustration with a lot of my colleagues that we keep being considered for these things, and it’s an honor to be considered, but that honor only goes so far,” said Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, who is creating the committee. “Finishing second place or getting a participation trophy is not good enough.”

The committee will be similar to one created by former Oklahoma City Mayor Ronald Norick in 1992 after United Airlines chose Indianapolis over Oklahoma City for its headquarters. That effort led to Oklahoma City launching the MAPS program, which has funded improvements for schools, sports and entertainment facilities in the city through a series of temporary sales tax increases. 

The Senate committee, made up of 10 Republicans and two Democrats, will meet for the first time Tuesday. Brent Kisling, executive director of the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, will likely be one of the first witnesses. Kisling believes Oklahoma lacks adequate “shovel-ready sites with water, wastewater, electric, gas, fiber and roads,” to attract companies, he said in an emailed response to The Frontier. Oklahoma also needs to invest more into developing its workforce, he said. 

At a hearing on economic development at the Oklahoma Capitol last year, Department of Commerce officials told legislators that local municipalities in the state need to be able to show they have the infrastructure necessary to support 5,000 jobs.

The state Legislature has tried to address some of the problems with a new $250-million fund created in 2022 intended to fuel economic development throughout Oklahoma by improving infrastructure at industrial parks and rural airports. 

But Oklahoma’s workforce problem is a little harder to solve. Some of the companies that have passed on locating in Oklahoma didn’t have faith in the state’s ability to provide enough workers, Kisling said.

While a growing number of people are moving to Oklahoma from other places, the state still needs to add 140,000 new workers on top of projected population growth over the next decade, Jennifer Springer, director of Business Development at the Commerce Department, told lawmakers at the hearing on economic development last year.

“This has always been a problem for Oklahoma. We simply have not had the capacity to produce a workforce sufficient for these industries and firms,” said Keith Gåddie, a longtime political observer and associate dean of the Gibbs College of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma.

Kinnee Tilley, the Vice President of the Oklahoma Manufacturing Alliance, said the organization is creating apprenticeship programs across the state to grow the number of skilled workers.

This will help when companies look at Oklahoma and see there are workers who already have the training, she said. 

“I feel like we’re really investing our time, talent and ability in helping manufacturers grow their pipeline,” Tilley said.

Oklahoma has also lost out to states that have offered more lucrative incentive packages, which can include millions or even billions of dollars in tax breaks and other subsidies. 

Oklahoma has worked to ensure its incentives are performance-based, meaning a company doesn’t receive them until it meets certain performance measures, Kisling said. And while that works for the state’s benefit in protecting its assets, it’s not always the best choice for the company. 

Panasonic was eligible to receive millions of dollars in tax breaks in Kansas before the battery plant was up and running. The company’s incentive package from Kansas would eventually exceed $1 billion, compared to the competing bid of nearly $700 million from Oklahoma.

When Volkswagen chose Ontario over Oklahoma, the company became eligible for billions in incentives from both the United States and Canada. According to the Financial Times, Volkswagen is eligible for up to $10 billion in U.S. incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed last year. The exact incentive package Canada offered is unknown, but according to Reuters, the country has agreed to help the company secure access to raw minerals needed to make the batteries.

Kisling said in the future, Oklahoma might need to consider offering companies incentives up front to compete with other locations. While it’s not without risks, the upside could be worth it, he said. 

Meanwhile, Democrats in the Legislature say they believe Oklahoma keeps getting passed over because of the state’s conservative social policies. They referenced the Republican-controlled state’s hardline stances against abortion and access to health care for transgender people. 

Rep. Monroe Nichols, D-Tulsa, places some of the blame on State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ attacks on public schools and teachers. 

“​​Anybody who reads the newspaper, as they’re looking into the state and doing their due diligence, what do they see? They see a public education system led by somebody who works every day to dismantle it,” Rep. Monroe Nichols, D-Tulsa, said. “…  I would understand that somebody’s doing their due diligence, we would select elsewhere.”

House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson, D-Oklahoma City, said she believes Oklahoma needs “lawmakers to stop making laws that limit access to healthcare for women and transgender Oklahomans” in order to attract more companies. 

But Republicans and other officials told The Frontier that while these points make good sound bites, they are not based in fact. They pointed to states like Texas, South Carolina and Florida, which are also conservative but still land major companies.

“Our culture matches much more closely with those economic growth states than those that are slowly dying,” Kisling said. 

While social issues might not be the main deciding factor, they can create an “easy out” for companies looking to move here, Gåddie said.

“If you’ve got a global corporation that is concerned about the look of things and actually is concerned about the quality of life all their employees will have, sometimes Oklahoma makes itself tough to sell and that’s a shame,” he said. 

The post Why three major companies have passed on expanding in Oklahoma appeared first on The Frontier.

McCall, R-Atoka, gave the Senate an ultimatum earlier this month: hear the House’s education package “as is,” or any Senate education bills will die in the House.

Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, did not take kindly to the threats at the time, calling them “asinine” and said that if the package remains the same, it will fail in the Senate as the bills don’t have the support necessary to pass.

On Monday, the Senate significantly changed the House package in committee.

On House Bill 1935, also known as the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act, the Senate added an income cap of $250,000 to qualify. The Senate wants to increase the private school refundable tax credit to $7,500 per student up from the original $5,000 per student and lower the homeschool tax credit to $1,000 per family down from the original $2,500 per child. 

The bill is expected to cost $98.7 million in its first year, down significantly from the $300 million estimation of the House’s version. 

On House Bill 2775, the Senate wants to increase the across-the-board teacher pay raise to between $3,000 and $6,000, up from $2,500, and introduce a pay structure based on years of experience, education and accreditation. The Senate bill would also allow districts to give annual bonuses to the top 10% of eligible teachers and support staff.

Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, has worked this session to implement some sort of merit-based pay to reward the best and brightest teachers and support staff, he said.

The bonuses would be capped at $5,000. 

The bill is expected to cost $530 million, with $500 million going into the public school funding formula and $30 million to a revolving fund for teacher pay raises. The bill passed with bi-partisan support out of the Senate Education and Appropriation Committees on Monday.

“Today we made the largest single investment in public education history in the state of Oklahoma,” said Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, one of the bill’s co-authors.

Making these changes shores up the package’s support in the Senate, but puts its ultimate passage and other education bills in jeopardy.

Treat said he talked with Gov. Kevin Stitt and McCall earlier Monday about his plan to amend the legislation and hopes McCall will see the bigger picture and pass the education bills.

“I hope that we will put historic funding for public education and school choice ahead of those types of claims,” Treat said. “I don’t know what they will do, but I know that he cares deeply about these two issues and I trust that he’ll do the right thing.”

A representative from McCall’s office said the Speaker is still reviewing the changes. On Friday, Stitt said he believes “cooler heads are going to prevail” in negotiations between the Senate and the House. His office declined to comment on the changes today. 

The post Oklahoma Senate alters education bills after threats from the House appeared first on The Frontier.

During executive session at their March 3 meeting, the board originally interviewed five candidates to be the agency’s executive director. 

Board Chairman Mike Fina said their initial preferred candidate was from out of state and they had concerns about the person’s lack of familiarity with Oklahoma.

Following the March 3 meeting, Stitt asked the council to consider Sanders instead, Board Member Mike Erhart told The Frontier. 

Sanders was not one of the candidates originally interviewed for the position so board members put his interview on the March 22 meeting agenda. After interviewing him for over an hour the board voted to extend him an offer.

Following the meeting, Fina said Stitt was involved in the process and said the governor asked the board to consider multiple candidates and did not confirm or deny that he asked the board to consider Sanders.

“We’re all appointed at the pleasure of somebody, and (Stitt) had put names in throughout the whole thing,” Fina said. “So it’s really not fair to say that he put one name in particular, he gave me several names throughout the process that he would be happy with as director of the Broadband Office.”

Sanders declined to comment until the offer was public and directed questions to Fina.

Sanders’ salary will have to be approved by the board at their next meeting as he asked for slightly more than what had previously been approved, Fina said.

When asked if he instructed the board to consider Sanders, Stitt gave a statement commending Sanders’ accomplishments and boasted his credentials to do the job.

“Mike’s extensive work at the state House and his time serving in the George W. Bush administration give him the unique ability to understand this process and how to best navigate the complicated DC bureaucracy to make sure these federal dollars are distributed fairly and align with our vision to deliver high-speed internet access to 95% of the state by 2028,” Stitt said in a statement.

Sanders served in the Legislature from 2008-2020 and worked in President George W. Bush’s White House as Director of Interns.

In 2021 he started Sanders Strategy and Consulting.

The broadband office is funded almost exclusively on federal funds and grants and is tasked with expanding broadband access to 95% of the state by June 30, 2028. 

A spokesperson for the agency said the office is sitting on $382 million from the American Rescue Plan Act state and local recovery fund money and $167 million from the capital project fund in ARPA. They are expected to invest more than $1 billion for broadband infrastructure over five years.

The office is governed by a board that is comprised of nine members: three appointed by the Governor, two by the Senate Pro Tempore, two by the Speaker of the House, the Lieutenant Governor and the state Treasurer.

The post Former Rep. Mike Sanders to be Executive Director of the Oklahoma Broadband Office appeared first on The Frontier.

“We shut it down,” Stitt told The Frontier. “… There’s too many unanswered questions and it didn’t smell right to me that something was being shipped halfway across the country.”

Stitt’s office received an email around 2 p.m. Saturday from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, notifying the state that Norfolk Southern Railway Company intended to ship “waste material” from Ohio to Lone Mountain, a toxic waste storage facility near Waynoka operated by the company Clean Harbors Inc. 

Around 5 p.m., Stitt was informed that 2,600 cubic yards, or 3,640 tons, of contaminated soil were expected to arrive in Oklahoma in less than 48 hours on Monday. 

Once informed waste was on its way to the state, Stitt reached out to Oklahoma’s two Senators, Markwayne Mullin and James Lankford, as well as Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Cheyenne, in an attempt to further understand the situation and prevent the waste from arriving in the state.

Stitt and the lawmakers came to the conclusion that Oklahoma would reject the shipment. 

At the time, trucks carrying the waste were already on the way from Ohio. But late Saturday evening, Stitt told the EPA on a call that Oklahoma would not accept the contaminated soil, blocking its arrival in the state.

In a statement, Maria Michalos, a spokesperson for the EPA, accused Stitt of playing politics. She said Norfolk Southern is already under contract with a disposal facility in Oklahoma that is able to accept the waste and the EPA “has safeguards in place to ensure communities are protected every step of the way.”

“Governor Stitt is playing politics at the expense of the people of East Palestine, Ohio. It’s not only wrong, it’s unlawful to refuse shipments of waste because they come from other states,” Michalos said. “We are reviewing all legal authorities to ensure that the people of East Palestine, who’ve suffered enough already, don’t become victims of this political grandstanding.”

The Feb. 3 Ohio train derailment released toxic chemicals into the air, water and soil. Norfolk Southern, the owner of the derailed train, is responsible for the cleanup, including shipping the toxic waste out of the area. And the EPA was required to sign off on the company shipping the waste to Oklahoma. Officials from Clean Harbors and Norfolk Southern did not respond to requests for comment.

After Norfolk Southern shipped waste to Indiana with little warning, Stitt said officials there warned him to keep a lookout for the possibility of shipments to Oklahoma.

And though it’s not unusual for facilities in Oklahoma to take in hazardous waste, the lack of transparency and the high-profile nature of the East Palestine derailment made Oklahoma officials weary about accepting the toxic soil, Stitt said.

Both Senators agree with Stitt’s decision to block the toxic waste shipment from entering Oklahoma.

“There are too many unknowns for this request from the EPA to move hazardous waste from East Palestine, Ohio to Oklahoma,” Lankford said in a statement. “The EPA has not guaranteed the safety of the people of Ohio, and Oklahoma should be as rightly concerned about any substance coming here for disposal.”

Mullin, who is the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee on Chemical Safety, which has jurisdiction over issues of chemical safety and waste management, said he “has been in constant communication with” Stitt and after evaluating the options “stand(s) by his informed decision.”

Norfolk Southern has struggled to find places willing to accept toxic waste from East Palestine since the derailment. Officials in Texas and Michigan have also rejected shipments. 

The EPA took over cleanup efforts in February and Norfolk Southern remains legally obligated to identify and clean up contaminated soil and water resources,  including finding places to dispose of it.

This story has been updated to include a statement from the EPA.

The post Stitt blocks shipment of toxic waste from Ohio train derailment headed for Oklahoma appeared first on The Frontier.

The decision by the commission comes on the heels of nine months of infighting between Kintsel, the commission and the Governor’s office. Kintsel has refused to attend commission meetings in 2023, claiming three commission members are illegitimately appointed. Kintsel challenged Gov. Kevin Stitt in the 2022 Republican Primary, receiving 14.3% of the vote. 

“With no authority other than his own opinion, the agency director we’ve been tasked with overseeing has shut us out of the agency and oversight, denied our authority and defiantly obstructed our work at every turn. He has publicly exhibited absolute insubordination,” said the Chairman of the veteran’s commission Robert Allen.

When reached for comment, Kintsel said the group that fired him is “not the commission,” and he would have a more thorough statement later in the day. 

According to state statute, the governor appoints all nine members of the Veterans Commission, with six seats representing specific groups. The statute requires each group to send the governor a list of five potential nominees for its seat on the commission. 

Over the past year, at least three of Stitt’s appointees were not selected from the organizations’ lists. Instead, Stitt appointed members of the organizations who had not officially been recommended. The three members in question were Chairman Robert Allen from the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Ted Perry of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Daniel Orr of the Disabled Veterans of America. Allen’s legitimacy is no longer questioned after the governor re-appointed him to an at-large spot. 

At a press conference Friday, Stitt said after meeting with legislators, he decided to ask any commissioner being challenged to “abstain from any vote.” Perry voted, while Orr was absent and did not vote.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a February statement he agrees with Kintsel that Stitt has “not followed the lawfully ascribed process” when appointing commissioners but also said it is “equally unfortunate that the executive director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs is acting irresponsibly and not in the best interests of veterans.”

Over their past three meetings, the Veterans Commission has laid the groundwork to terminate Kintsel’s employment. They saw presentations of how the agency fumbled the construction of the Oklahoma Veterans Home in Sallisaw, costing the state an additional $21 million. They also heard about a potential data security risk created by someone within the agency. Kintsel has disputed these issues are his fault. 

“We’ve got the original architect that was grossly negligent and did not provide complete architectural plans for the project,” Kintsel said Feb. 9. “Of course, it took a while for that to come to light. So we have retained a law firm here in Oklahoma City that is going to sue them and hopefully recover damages for the state of Oklahoma.”

Kintsel has also refused to let the commissioners meet at their usual meeting spot inside the agency headquarters and has refused to post meeting agendas online. 

The Frontier and NonDoc previously reported how agency employees and state Legislators had tired of the fighting between Kintsel and the commission.

“As chairman of this committee, my only job is to ensure that we are doing the best to take care of our veterans,” Rep. Josh West, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans and Military Affairs, emailed Kintsel, ODVA Deputy Director Sarah Lane, and vice chair of the commission Sid Ellington. “Fix your shit and quit sending me your back-and-forth emails. I’m a pretty easy guy to get along with, but I have no use for this petty, childish bullshit. If my language offends you, then I’m sorry, but I’m going to call it as I see it.”

The commission also voted to terminate the employment of Deputy Director Sarah Lane.

“Her level of outright insubordination may be more egregious than her boss’,” Allen said.

The commission hired former Under Secretary of the Navy Admiral Greg Slavonic as interim director of the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs. Slavonic also previously served as chief of staff to Sen. James Lankford. 

The post Veterans Commission votes to terminate Kintsel’s employment as Executive Director appeared first on The Frontier.

In a press conference on Thursday, McCall, R-Atoka, said if the Senate votes to change his chamber’s education package, House Bill 1935 and House Bill 2775, they are voting to “kill the legislation.” 

After publicly coming out against Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat’s school choice legislation last year, McCall introduced his own school choice legislation this year, HB 1935, or the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act. It would provide up to a $5,000 refundable tax credit to families for each student they have in private school and a $2,500 refundable tax credit to families for each student they have in alternative education methods such as homeschooling.

The other part of the package, HB 2775, would provide a $2,500 teacher pay raise and put an additional $300 million into the per-pupil funding system for public schools. The complete package could cost up to $800 million.

“Amending either one of those pieces of legislation, we made it very clear, you are trying to sabotage the education plan,” McCall said. 

McCall’s comments took Treat, R-Oklahoma City, by surprise and the Republican Senator did not hold back in his response. Treat said McCall’s statements were “asinine,” and said the Senate “won’t be bullied into a position.”

“If the Speaker’s goal is to kill school choice, he’s doing a great job,” Treat said at his weekly press conference. “… It’s setting the trap to be able to blame me for school choice dying. … I’m unashamed about being for school choice. If school choice dies because we make an amendment or two to the package, that will be on whoever kills it, not the people who advance it.”

McCall emphasized the House is open to supporting other education legislation set to come out of the Senate this session, but he wants to see that separate from his package.

“We have made it very clear that we’re not saying that’s all that we would consider in terms of education initiatives this year … But the correct place for those are in different pieces of legislation,” he said.

Treat complimented the education plan presented by Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, saying they are not going to “wad that up and throw it in the trash can because there’s a new idea out there,” and they will continue “to advocate for Senate priorities.”

Pugh’s plan would raise minimum salaries for teachers by $3,000 to $6,000, and require districts to provide certain teachers at least 12 weeks of paid maternity leave.

If the House’s package is heard unamended, they will consider follow up legislation, also known as trailer bills, on the Senate’s education priorities, McCall said.

Treat said McCall’s suggestion was “very benevolent,” but noted there had been “no serious discussion of trailer bills.”

“We all know trailer bills are only as good if they get to the governor’s desk and signed,” Treat said. “And so there’s a reason they tied (HB) 1935 and (HB) 2775 together. If they want to have trailer bills, we’ll tie all the effective dates together.”

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