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State leaders have a complicated relationship with federal grant money. They love federal cash. Just don’t tell them what to do with it or how to do it. That’s caused the state to walk away from tens of millions of dollars meant to help Oklahomans in need. Oklahoma’s federal lawsuit over family planning grants and Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt’s decision not to participate in a summer food program for a second year are just the latest examples in the state’s love-hate relationship with federal money. To be sure, such conflicts are nothing n...
Oklahoma lawmakers significantly boosted funding for crisis pregnancy centers despite years of complaints a vendor running the program was too slow to reimburse the mostly religious-affiliated nonprofits that counsel against abortion. The Choosing Childbirth Act, passed in 2017, pays crisis pregnancy centers for providing services for expectant mothers. The centers can't provide any information about abortion services, now a moot point after the state outlawed abortion in the wake of the 2022...
A traveling campus preacher at the University of Central Oklahoma wears a hate-filled sign and yells at students. Competing protests about Palestine and Israel are held at the University of Oklahoma. Hecklers try to shout down an appearance by State Superintendent Ryan Walters at Oklahoma State University. Those are just a few examples of recent events on Oklahoma college campuses covered by free speech laws. But as social media amplifies political polarization, making sure campuses continue to be centers of robust discussion and peaceful...
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt implored lawmakers to send him tax cuts and said the continuing fallout from the McGirt decision’s effect on tribal-state relations risks state unity, an assertion that left representatives of many of the state’s tribes sitting stone-faced in the gallery. Stitt, in his sixth State of the State speech at the Oklahoma Capitol, struck a hopeful tone about the state’s future. He evoked President Ronald Reagan several times during the 41-minute speech, saying people are looking to Oklahoma as an example of Pilgrim John...
Oklahoma spent more than $544,000 for the state’s National Guard to help secure the U.S. border with Mexico, money that came from a disaster fund typically used for National Guard response to tornadoes and other extreme weather events. Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, heeding a call from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, called up the National Guard for a 30-day state deployment in August. More than a dozen Republican governors, who have criticized President Joe Biden’s border security policies, sent National Guard members to assist Abbott’s Operation Lone...
Money from legal settlements against opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers will finally start to trickle out to Oklahoma cities and counties in 2024, almost four years after lawmakers set up a board to administer the funds. More than 250 local governments told the Oklahoma Opioid Abatement Board they were interested in applying for the grants. The money is supposed to go toward treatment and recovery programs and opioid abuse education and prevention. The Opioid Abatement Board has about $27 million available for local communities,...
Oklahoma Treasurer Todd Russ has publicly criticized one of the state’s largest pension funds for taking an exemption to a new law forbidding state pension funds from doing business with financial companies perceived to be hostile to the oil and gas industry. But Russ has quietly taken an exemption to the law when it comes to investments managed by his own office. The treasurer’s office exercised one for services from Bank of America and is negotiating with JP Morgan Chase on another exemption. Both companies are among six Russ placed on a lis...
Oklahoma’s superagency that handles information technology, budgeting, employee management and state office buildings has little budget transparency of its own and needs to do a better job of responding to agencies it provides services, a legislative oversight report concluded. The Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency said its examination of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services found the agency’s annual appropriations have tripled in the past five years, reaching $164 million in fiscal year 2024. During the same time, the age...
Millions in broadband funding could be further delayed after some companies and board members raised concerns about duplicating efforts in areas of Oklahoma already served by internet service providers. The Oklahoma Broadband Office, which is overseeing more than $1.1 billion in federal funding to expand broadband throughout the state, said it will study the issue after receiving questions about applications under the state’s share of American Rescue Plan Act funding. Lawmakers last year gave the office $382 million to upgrade and expand broadb...
After months of wrangling and the week-long efforts of mediation by a retired Oklahoma Supreme Court justice, the state’s GOP leaders announced what they called a “monumental” education funding package on Monday. The $785 million in additional spending includes money for teacher pay raises and classroom funding. It is tied to a new refundable tax credit to reimburse parents who pay for private school. The plan also provides funding for six weeks of paid maternity leave for certified teaching professionals, more funding for a literacy progr... Full story
Oklahoma lawmakers continue to be frustrated with a vendor hired to help pregnant women for expanded services under the state's Choosing Childbirth Act. The slow pace of getting money to nonprofit organizations that provide crisis pregnancy care means that almost $8 million is sitting unused in a state account. Oklahoma's abortion ban and the fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down Roe v. Wade in June 2022 adds to the urgency to provide more flexibility under the state's...
New Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond hasn’t wasted any time in his first month in office. Drummond, an attorney and banker from Tulsa, has taken over from local district attorneys several pending investigations of state spending. Among them are probes into the Tourism department and its contract with barbecue restaurant Swadley’s; former Epic Charter Schools officials; and an early pandemic relief program for educational spending. He’s slowed the pace of scheduled death penalty executions and filed or joined several state lawsu...
As Oklahoma’s Republican lawmakers pass the nation’s strictest anti-abortion laws, an internal audit by the Oklahoma State Department of Health shows the agency has serious concerns about the performance of a vendor selected to provide reimbursements for care to pregnant women at crisis centers that counsel against abortions. Despite the concerns, the Health Department recently renewed the contract with the Oklahoma Pregnancy Care Network for another year. Officials said they issued multiple requests for proposals, but the network was the onl... Full story
Oklahoma’s purchasing director has decided almost $12 billion in applications for federal money under last year’s Covid-19 funding package for states should stay secret as the Legislature and Gov. Kevin Stitt’s administration consider projects for approval. Included in the blanket exemption to the state’s Open Records Act are state agencies applying for funding from the American Rescue Plan Act. Oklahoma has $1.87 billion in funding to dole out, with another $1.32 billion going to counties, cities and other local governments. The Office...
Customers of Oklahoma Natural Gas will be paying an extra $7.80 per month for the next 25 years under a plan approved Tuesday by the three-member Oklahoma Corporation Commission. The fee will go toward paying almost $1.4 billion in natural gas costs racked up by the utility last February during a winter storm. The extra, fixed charge on customer bills will pay back bonds issued by the state under a process called securitization. Oklahoma Watch and Floodlight News wrote about the proposed settlement last week. In a proceeding that lasted less... Full story
When Neil Crittenden heard that an extreme winter storm was about to hit Oklahoma last winter, he did what officials advised him to do and kept his heat on and water running so that his pipes wouldn’t freeze. The 40-year-old Oklahoma City resident even used hair dryers to keep them thawed. What Crittenden didn’t know at the time was that the energy he used was going to cost him significantly. As winter storm Uri swept across the south central United States last February, utilities that weren’t prepared scrambled. The storm caused black... Full story
Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are spiking again in Oklahoma, just weeks before the start of a school year that was supposed to be a return to normal. The midsummer surge began in the past month and followed the rapid spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus in neighboring Missouri and Arkansas. Most of the infected and hospitalized have not been vaccinated, health officials said. Also alarming is a recent rise in cases among children under 12, who aren’t yet eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine. Emergency approval for that age g...
It’s been a long, strange trip for Oklahoma’s $2.6 million shipment of hydroxychloroquine, bought a year ago as a once-promising treatment for COVID-19. The 1.2 million doses of the drug normally used to treat lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and prevent malaria were shipped from a California distributor to a small pharmacy in Pryor, with the state paying for the hydroxychloroquine from money borrowed from fees generated by medical marijuana licenses. The hydroxychloroquine now sits in a warehouse at an undisclosed location, with the Oklahoma Sta...
State public health officials are feeling optimistic about the pace of vaccinations and lower cases and hospitalizations from Covid-19, leading to changes this week in Oklahoma's nursing home visitation policies and a new phase in the vaccination rollout. Just two weeks after opening up vaccinations to residents with comorbidities and pre-kindergarten to 12th-grade teachers and staff, the state opened up Phase 3 of its vaccination rollout on Tuesday. The new phase includes essential workers and... Full story
The late-2020 surge in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths left many of the state’s tracking systems behind as providers responsible for updating reports concentrated on providing patient care ahead of filling out reports. It was further exacerbated as epidemiologists and other public health officials got behind in fatality case investigations, which is the total the state has been publishing for Covid-19 deaths. That has led to a stark difference in the state’s death toll from Covid-19 and one kept by a division of the Centers for...
Staff shortages and equipment transition for the relocated Public Health Lab in Stillwater have caused state health officials to outsource certain tests to private labs, and in some cases to a public health lab in Minnesota. The move will cause delays between 24 to 48 hours for some microbiology tests, according to an email obtained by Oklahoma Watch and sent earlier this week by John Murray, the lab's acting administrative director. Among the tests to be outsourced were those used for E.coli, m...
Active coronavirus cases and Covid-19 hospitalizations remained high this week but began to decline even as the state’s death toll from the pandemic accelerated. By last Friday, Jan. 22, there were more than 32,000 active coronavirus cases statewide, a decline of 16% in the past week. The state’s seven-day moving average of new daily cases fell to 2,564, down from an average of 3,923 a week earlier. But reported Covid-19 deaths so far in January reached 698 on Jan. 22, bringing the state’s death total in the pandemic to 3,187. State Epide...
By Friday, Jan. 15, the state had recorded more than 57,000 new cases of coronavirus in the first two weeks of 2021. There were 436 reported Covid-19 deaths so far in January, already higher than the entire number of reported deaths in November. The state reported 746 deaths in December, although lags in reporting could mean some of those deaths came in earlier months. Nationally, Oklahoma led the nation in test positivity in the last week, according to the latest federal Community Profile... Full story
A surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Oklahoma City has led Integris Baptist Medical Center to open its Portland Avenue campus to treat patients with the coronavirus. The hospital system said the ability of its Northwest Expressway campus to treat non-COVID and COVID patients was reaching capacity and Integris was opening the Portland campus later Tuesday. The hospital will start with 40 beds and will evaluate if more are needed, Integris spokeswoman Brooke Cayot said in an email. Th...
On Friday, the state recorded its largest daily case increase, adding more than 5,200 cases to bring the total to more than 320,000 cases since the virus was first recorded in March. The death toll from Covid-19 rose to 2,703 Oklahomans, according to the latest snapshot from the Oklahoma State Department of Health. In the first week of 2021, Oklahoma reported 214 deaths, surpassing the monthly death totals from each of the first five months of the pandemic. (Because of reporting lags, it's not...
