April brings multiple instances of Republican in-fighting at Okla. State Capitol

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — The month of April is showing that just because the Republican Party has a supermajority, doesn’t mean they are having a super easy time passing policies.

In-fighting between executive branch members, the governor’s office and the state Senate saw another public chapter play out on Friday adding on to what has been a month of Republican lawmakers blaming each other for difficulties in getting policies across the finish line.

“I really think that’s it. It’s a personal hatred of me,” said State Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat (R) last week when asked about the number of Senate bills being vetoed compared to House bills.

Treat said the relationship between he and Stitt began to sour last year during education reform efforts linked to school choice tax credits when Stitt vetoed multiple Senate bills until education reform was passed.

“It all kind of devolved last April or May. He had been siding with the House the entire time over the school choice debate,” Treat said.

Stitt said he doesn’t care which chamber a bill originated in, if it’s bad policy, he said he would veto it.

“I have no ill will or feeling toward anyone in this building, but I’m going to keep doing what I think is right for Oklahomans,” Stitt said.

One of the bills caught up in the fighting between the Senate and  the governor’s office is SB 1470, which allows for a judge to consider if an offender was involved in some kind of sustained domestic violence incident when the crime was committed.

Treat said it’s about abuse victims defending themselves.

“I’m appalled that the governor vetoed that. It’s about domestic violence survivors who commit some crime related to that domestic violence incident or lifetime of domestic violence,” Treat said after a veto override vote was taken.

Stitt said he vetoed the bill because law enforcement said it was a bad bill and not for any disdain for the author who is Treat.

“Everybody should be shocked and really understand this bill,” Stitt said. “It basically would have said any crime... Currently, someone who is in prison for bad stuff, rape, murder, whatever, could go back and say there is some psychological issue that happened twenty years ago in their past, and so they should have a different sentence today.”

The fighting is not just between Stitt and Treat. Stitt had harsh remarks for Attorney General Gentner Drummond and State Auditor and Inspector Cyndi Byrd. Stitt said the two are smearing his office for future political gains.

“When you connect the dots, there’s some stuff that looks weird,” Stitt said.

Last week, Byrd released an audit that said Stitt allowed the state to become a “no bid” state meaning the process to get competitive offers on state contracts was not happening. Byrd went on to accuse now Tourism Secretary Shelly Zumwalt of funneling millions of dollars to her husband’s company in a no bid contract during the pandemic when she was running the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.

Stitt said no previous audits found wrongdoing and said he stood by Zumwalt.

“You’ve got an A.G. that’s already said he’s running for governor. You’ve got an auditor that’s running for lieutenant governor and within an hour, we got no notice. The House didn’t get any notice and within an hour, they’ve coordinated their press statements,” Stitt said.

Drummond issued a statement demanding Zumwalt to resign and cooperate with his agency’s investigation of misspent COVID funds.

Zumwalt said she’s been transparent about what and who her husband is, and was told by legal counsel for the state agencies she’s worked for that she was fine and in compliance with the law.

Stitt and Drummond have had multiple public court fights that continue to this day. Earlier this year, Drummond released an attorney general’s opinion that said Stitt’s cabinet secretaries could not lead the agencies they are supposed to oversee and supervise. This caused multiple resignations and a new lawsuit that Zumwalt is a party to.

Drummond has made previous statements also about Stitt’s handling of Tribal issues in addition to having divided opinions about the nation’s first religious charter school using Oklahoma taxpayer dollars as its only operating source, St. Isidore of Seville Online Catholic Charter School.

“I think in this instance, the governor doesn’t pass up an instance to be acrimonious with the Tribes,” Drummond told FOX23 News last year when asked about an issue involving tribal license plates.

The squabbles also bleed down into the current budget negotiations between the State House and the State Senate.

This month, the Senate accused the House of “operating in darkness” when the House did not submit the paperwork the Senate requested when it came to crafting the state’s next budget.

“It is our conviction in the Senate that we started in the beginning to shine light on the budget process, and if you go dark in the middle of that process, the entire process goes dark,” said Senate Appropriations Chairman Roger Thompson (R-Okemah).

The Senate started a new budget process around last Christmas, and it passed its version of the budget in March, two months ahead of schedule. It’s the earliest the Senate had ever passed a budget in decades if ever.

Incoming House Speaker Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) told FOX23 the House is transparent, but it looks at budgets in a different way than the Senate. He said the disputes over the budget are healthy and he was confident a special session would not be needed to finish the budget by the required Sine Die date of May 31.

“This happens a lot when it comes to the budget process and sometimes there’s some disagreement. At the end of the day, if we agreed on everything, that would not be good government. We’ve got to find commonality and get a budget across the finish line,” Hilbert said.