Scott Pruitt and Gary Jones are a Feuding!
Sooner Politics' David Van took on the long simmering spat between State Auditor Gary Jones and former AG Scott Pruitt over the EPA funds mismanagement scandal at the Tar Creek cleanup site. Jones had protested the sealing of the audit performed by his office around 2014 but refused to release the audit himself because Pruitt had sealed it. Credibility is on the line for both men and the outcome will be one of them going down, either as a failed candidate (really Jones is just looking for a job and using the race to get one) or Scott Pruitt is toppled as EPA head and even faces potential prison time should some of the allegations turn out to be true.
Tar Creek is a 40 square mile EPA clean up site in North Eastern Oklahoma around the Picher area. They mined lead and zinc there for decades, leaving behind vast chat piles and contaminated soil and towns. People were bought out by the EPA fund, handled by a trust called LICRAT, Lead Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust, set up by the Oklahoma legislature in 2004. The waste and corruption soon bloomed and eventually the feds demanded an investigation. Then AG Drew Edmondson was said to have blocked the first investigation but in 2011 Gary Jones was asked to do an audit of the Trust, a two year project, that was completed in early 2014 and handed over to Scott Pruitt. Pruitt turned around and gave LICRAT a copy of the audit, then sealed the audit for all others. The investigation was buried at that point.
Why? Some say that Drew Edmondson received campaign donations for his actions in refusing to investigate. Some say the same about Scott Pruitt and that the 2014 Scott Pruitt campaign committee will have matching names with healthy contributions. Pruitt is attacking Gary Jones, calling the audit sloppy and reckless. There is a history between the two. In 2016 Pruitt attempted to block a state audit of the AG office, preferring to perform his own audit, but eventually the audit was performed by the state auditor and everything appeared to be okay.
Pruitt is indeed in charge of the EPA, the very agency that owned this entire mess. Now we are talking about the embezzlement, waste, or corruption of EPA pollution funds and what better way to cover your tracks than by becoming the head of the EPA?
For his part, if Jones knew that real corruption had occurred and that Pruitt was covering it up, was he not responsible for not going to the feds on the matter? As a fellow elected state officer he isn't beholden to Pruitt other than following legal advice but if the legal advice is suspect or corruption is known....no way out other than to call in the feds.
This is coming to a head because a November 2017 lawsuit filed from Washington DC asking that the audit be opened up and released. Reading through the various pleadings and answers shows that Jones is asking the court to release the audit and Mike Hunter with the AG office is pulling out all stops to prevent that from happening.
We visited the scandal about three years ago and found the scandal very credible. As an example, Micky Mantle's childhood home was reported demolished and dumped into the landfill yet that same home is now on display in a nearby town, Commerce. The contractor was paid for demolishing the home and its disposal. Was it instead sold? Donated? If that was the case the new owner would have been responsible for moving the home.
