Hamilton : Oklahoma senators take aim at governor control over agency directors

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<p>By : <a href="https://journalrecord.com/author/arnoldhamilton/">Arnold Hamilton</a>//Guest Columnist//February 26, 2026// </p>
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<p>By : <a href="https://journalrecord.com/author/arnoldhamilton/">Arnold Hamilton</a>//Guest Columnist//February 26, 2026// </p>
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<p>What the Oklahoma Legislature giveth, the Oklahoma Legislature can taketh away.</p>
<p>Case in point: The Senate’s initial steps this week to correct boneheaded decisions by previous legislatures that gave the governor CEO-like authority over some of the state’s largest and most consequential agencies.</p>
<p>Oklahoma’s Founders, as you know, crafted the statehouse structure to guard against the potential excesses of too much power in too few hands. But Republicans intoxicated with full legislative control for the first time in a century quickly upended the system in 2011.</p>
<p>Not so much to reward a trusted governor or to demonstrate their fealty to the notion “gummint ought be run like a bidness,” but rather as a means to rid key agency boards and leadership of Democratic appointees.</p>
<p>The first act was to boot State Board of Education members who dared resist newly-elected state Superintendent Janet Barresi’s rightwing agenda aimed at knee-capping teachers’ unions and favoring homeschooling and private religious schools over traditional public ed.</p>
<p>You may remember how that worked out: Barresi’s one term was so tumultuous that Republican primary voters rejected her 2014 re-election bid.</p>
<p>Yet, in 2019, in an ill-conceived effort to make nice with newly elected Gov. Kevin Stitt and keep peace with a growing far-right caucus, the emerging Republican supermajority gave Stitt the authority to hire and fire the directors of five agencies: transportation, corrections, mental health and substance abuse services, health care authority and juvenile affairs.</p>
<p>You also may remember how that worked out: A series of ethical lapses and fiscal blunders by Stitt’s hand-picked agency leaders, many of whom didn’t last long before getting shuffled into lower-profile roles or departing state government altogether.</p>
<p>Adding insult to injury: Those leaders of those agencies-in-tumult now collect about $100,000 a year in taxpayer-financed salaries and benefits more than their predecessors did.</p>
<p>Thankfully, Kingfisher Sen. <a href="https://journalrecord.com/tag/darcy-jech/">Darcy Jech</a>, the Senate’s Rural Caucus chair, is taking aim at fixing what’s turned out to be a massive mistake, starting with authority at two <a href="https://journalrecord.com/tag/state-agencies/">state agencies</a> that made headlines for leadership malfeasance: The Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department and the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (<a href="https://journalrecord.com/tag/odmhsas/">ODMHSAS</a>).
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<p>Jech’s <a href="https://journalrecord.com/tag/senate-bill-1327/">Senate Bill 1327</a> would return authority to the Tourism and Recreation Commission to hire, fire and set the salary for the agency’s director. Think: Jerry Winchester and the Swadley’s Foggy Bottom Kitchen debacle that resulted in Winchester’s resignation and an ongoing criminal case.
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<p>Separately, Jech’s <a href="https://journalrecord.com/tag/senate-bill-1430/">Senate Bill 1430</a> would re-empower the ODMHSAS board to choose and/or dismiss the agency’s commissioner. Think: the Legislature’s ouster last year of Commissioner Allie Friesen amidst the agency’s fiscal crisis that included the need for a legislative bailout to make payroll and ongoing threats to close community behavioral health facilities.
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<p>None of that screw-ups that yielded Jech’s proposals would surprise anyone who paid the least attention to Stitt’s pre-electoral career in private business. His Gateway Mortgage Group ran afoul of regulators and was fined or sanctioned in at least nine states.</p>
<p>Which, in hindsight, makes the Legislature’s decision to give Stitt control of five major state agencies even more baffling. Lawmakers were warned incessantly by Democrats, political scientists, historians and, yes, even newspaper columnists that the day would come when they’d rue the decision.</p>
<p>That day has arrived.</p>
<p>Thankfully, the Senate Economic Development, Workforce and Tourism Committee unanimously voted to advance SB 1327. The Senate Health and Human Services Committee advanced SB 1430 on an 8-2 vote.</p>
<p>Neither committee vote guarantees eventual passage through both chambers. But it’s a good sign for taxpayers that some Republicans are willing to admit and fix a mistake.</p>
<p>Arnold Hamilton is editor of The Oklahoma Observer; okobserver.org.</p>
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