Mary Fallin, Todd Lamb, and Gary Jones's Incompetency and Complacency
Obvious For All to See
$30,000,000.00 DHS Budget Hole Caused by Fallin, Lamb, and Jones's Refusal to Oversee Agencies
More Financial Irregularities Rumored at Commerce Department, Tourism Department, and Agriculture, Food, and Forestry Department
Firing the top lawyer and agency head instead of charging them with felonies and sending them to prison is Mary Fallin's way of covering up her massive incompetence in running the state agencies. Instead of arrests and charges Fallin's favorite boy toy Preston Doerflinger takes over the department, attempting to manage the fallout over years of overspending and fiscal mismanagement despite earlier warnings to authorities.
Three years ago a whistle blower sent a letter to then A.G. Scott Pruitt, detailing crimes being committed at the Department of Health including misappropriation of public funds and federal funds along with personal grievances. Instead of investigating the crimes Scott Pruitt forwarded the letter to the Health Department head. The FBI was notified of the matters as well after several administrators quit after attempts to force them to do illegal or inappropriate things. This is not unusual, both the FBI and the A.G. Office routinely ignore or worse, forward allegations to the department heads after complaints are made.
To clean up the mess caused by the missing $30,000,000.00 the legislature had to appropriate an additional thirty million dollars, deepening the budget cuts needed and deepening the budget hole for 2018 legislative session. Neither Fallin nor State Auditor Gary Jones were watching over the finances in a competent manner despite regular audits.
Another agency made the news over lawsuits covering claims of racial slurs and retaliation. The Department of Consumer Credit was forced to meet to discuss lawsuits filed by former employees stating that the director used racial slurs against American Indian and Hispanic employees. A federal court refused to throw out the lawsuits after stating that the women had presented sufficeint facts to prove race based discrimination and retaliation. The board voted to resolve the lawsuits, refusing to make public the costs involved. Fox 25 reporter Phil Cross was responsible for bringing the scandal and lawsuits to public view.
Then there is the Tourism Department, overseen and ran by Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb. In fact, other than acting as the head of the State Senate, this is Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb's only responsibility. The Tourism Department commission meeting detailed massive financial problems uncovered at the agency by once again Fox 25's Phil Cross. The Department admitted that it violated state law when handling taxpayer money including illegal payments from the department clearing accounts, which are only used for moving money from local bank accounts to the agency's general fund. By using the clearing accounts the agency was able to make payments off the books, hidden from auditors and Todd Lamb. Pre signed checks were routinely used and even emailed to other employees. The lax oversight and auditing contributed to the embezzlement of state funds from at least one state park, and that embezzlement was hidden from the board by the agency director even after criminal investigations were filed last February.
The fault was an "education issue" according to one agency official, despite state law and agency policies being ignored. The agency spent tax payer dollars to hire outside auditors, a slap in the face of State Auditor Gary Jones but perhaps warranted given the fact that Jones's audits had not uncovered the embezzlement or illegal acts. Hardly an education issue in our opinion, breaking the law knowingly is a crime, not an uneducated act. However, this same official had been notified of the financial problems months earlier according to Fox 25 reporter Phil Cross and a former internal auditor was threatened with immediate firing if he refused to resign immediately. The auditor had been hired by the board, not management, but this same agency official denied the allegations. No commission agenda or minutes showed the discussion of the firing of the internal auditor and it would have been illegal for the agency director to discuss the firing of the auditor outside of a scheduled meeting.
However, despite the incompetence of Governor Fallin and in the case of the Tourism Department Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb, the real blame to lay goes to State Auditor Gary Jones. Gary Jones has been auditing most of these departments since 2010. Here is a link to the 2015 Performance Audit of the Commerce Department. The Agriculture, Food, and Forestry Department had been regularly audited up until Gary Jones took over as state auditor, with audits done in 2003, 2004, 2006, and 2008. Then the only audit showing for the Agriculture, Food, and Forestry Department is shown as 2014. Why were the regular audits stopped? And regular audits occurred every four years for the Tourism and Recreation Department in 2002 and in 2006 in Gary Jones predecessor's administration and Jones himself audited the Tourism Department in 2010, 2012, and 2015 yet the illegal activities and embezzlement wasn't uncovered.
As one Gubernatorial candidate has been saying, we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. We have elected incompetent leaders for Governor and State Auditor and the bureaucracy has ran wild while Todd Lamb and Gary Jones focused on running for Governor and Mary Fallin has jetted around the world wasting taxpayer money. Before a single tax increase is offered much less passed we need a total audit of all state agencies, shut down the legislative session in 2018 for any business other than investigating the agency spending and adherence to core responsibilities of state government. Cut the fat, cut the waste, cut the swag. Determine if the spending is truly needed or is it like the TSET money paying for ads that tell us that it is healthy to drink water. Force the healthy and able bodied off government assistance and into the work force. Drive the illegals out of the state and watch the education budget become a surplus as in some counties the illegal children outnumber the citizen children. Talk about a shortage of teachers after the illegal children and their parents are sent packing.
