Bob Anthony's obsession
Is Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony nuts or is he right about an old 1986 Southwestern Bell Telephone customer overcharge case?

He wants to reopen the billion dollar matter claiming it was never settled. The phone company says it was and they repaid customers in extra services, in network upgrades.
Fellow Republican Commissioners Denise Bode and Jeff Cloud refused to join Anthony in reopening the matter. Two former Commissioners, Ed Apple and Cody Graves, called for Anthony's resignation. One House member called for his impeachment.
The Tulsa World editorialized that Anthony is "a loose cannon." The Ada News compared him to Don Quixote and the windmills of his mind. AG Drew Edmondson warned Anthony to not spend any state funds or facilities on a solo investigation.
Anthony wants to play the tapes he made for the FBI of he and other Corporation Commissioners being bribed by a SWB lawyer. On & on….
"Whatever," said management overhaul specialist Tom Daxon, "it's time to debate the issue and get it behind us."
Chairman Bode said they will, soon. Will they Open all of the Records? Can we understand them? Will we get a refund or did we already get it?
Naw! On 23 June 2003 Bode and Cloud closed the bribery rate case. -Ben Blackstock

CareerTech boards are awesome
FOI/Ok member Mick Hinton is writing ongoing articles about the state vo-tech schools, now called CareerTech.
These sprawling 29 super districts are hard for newspeople to cover; harder still to get understandable records on income & spending and how they operate.
Former Gov. Keating shelled them for eight years to no avail. Now the approach is to revamp the state board and ventilate where each district gets its money and what they do with it.
It won't be easy with their related Oklahoma Association of Career and Technology Inc. (a professional association of CT teachers & staff). Last April its Executive Director, Charlotte Edwards, wrote the state board it was time for the system's State Director to go and he went..
It was they who got a change by the 2003 legislative session in the Open Meeting Law allowing Career Tech boards to meet by telephone. See HB 1030.

Open records at Gordon Cooper? "It is the public policy of the State of Oklahoma that the people are vested with the inherent right to know and be fully informed about their government.
The purpose of this act is to ensure and facilitate the public's right of access to and review of government records so they may efficiently and intelligently exercise their inherent political power."
The above words are found in the text of the Open Records Act.
Ken Landry of Shawnee feels like he's been in a ping pong game with the information officer at Gordon Cooper Career Tech. He has been trying for several weeks (without success) to obtain specific documents relating to the school fund activity accounts. His stated reason is to learn about the construction of an exercise track.
However, if a record is deemed by law to be open, no reason is needed for a person to ask for a copy of the record. Just where is Tar Creek? It's way up in NE Oklahoma, spilling over into SE Kansas and toward Joplin; but mainly in Ottawa county NW of Miami. The zinc & lead chat piles and open mine shafts there have been in the news for 40+ years. Millions of federal and even some state bucks have been spent but the old open shafts and the underground tunnels have not been filled nor have the ugly piles of chat tailings been moved to fill roadbeds or whatever.
Health contaminants are alleged by lawyers but, alas, there's nobody to sue. Eagle Pitcher and other miners/smelters have long ago left the health risks and eyesores to politicians like Cong. Brad Carson (D-OK2). He has ping-ponged with U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) for not doing anything. Could we start with the records of how much money has been spent on the Tar Creek Super Clean Up Fund sites in the past 20 years? Also, who got the money and what they did for it; hook company names to people names and we might be able to pin the tail on the donkey,,,,er, the elephant. Open the Records...all of 'em..

Public comment misinformation
A bill to "clarify" public comment during Open Meetings didn't make it by the end of the recent 2003 session of the legislature. It wasn't needed.
Some persons have told school boards and municipal councils to hide behind what they term vagueness on public comment time during regular meetings. They say every item mentioned has to appear on the agenda and since it cannot be anticipated what citizens might comment on then no such sessions.
And, how to deal with persons who talk endlessly? Simple - Put miscellaneous public comment for one hour on the agenda; limit comment to five minutes per person. Enforce it.
But, just as cranks can make excessive, vindictive demands for Open Records so can crackpots play hob with a meeting. Unless, the chairperson has some backbone on time and subject constraints. Cut 'em off and move on. -BB

House Bill 1670 - Public Comments in Open Meetings - A Real Civics Lesson!

A few years ago, while I was conducting a workshop for the Board of a large eastern Oklahoma school district, the superintendent raised a concern about public comment time under the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act. Members of the public could make comments literally trashing the Board, but unless the topic had been listed on the advance agenda, Board members could not make even the slightest comment in response. Or so their legal counsel had advised them.
This was technically correct. Under the current law, members of public bodies generally cannot consider business unless it is on the advance agenda. Public bodies may consider "new business," but this is strictly defined as "any matter not known about or which could not have been reasonably foreseen prior to the time of posting" of the agenda.

About the same time, another board was telling members of the public that the Open Meeting Act restricted THEIR comments to items on the advance agenda! Interesting interpretation, since the stated purpose of the Act is "to encourage and facilitate an informed citizenry's understanding of the governmental processes and governmental problems." Furthermore, one of the main purposes of public comment time is to bring up issues and concerns of which officials may not already be aware.
A few months later, while doing research for an article on public comments, I noticed provisions of other state laws that could remedy these problems in Oklahoma, and suggested that Oklahoma's law be amended. The basic ideas were simple:

1. Clarify that Open Meeting Act agenda requirements did not apply to commenting members of the public.
2. Allow a public body to adopt its own policy on public comments.
3. Allow public officials to request clarification, correct misinformation, refer an issue to staff or other resources for factual information, request staff to report back to the body at a subsequent meeting, or direct staff to place a matter of business on a future agenda.
4. Clarify that public comment time is permitted but not required by the Open Meeting Act.

Simple enough? That's what I thought. But the first time the bill was introduced, the word went out that it would REQUIRE public bodies to allow public comment time. The second time, essentially the same bill, the word went out that the bill would BAN public comment time.
In small towns, a few comments from officials in response to public comments are not uncommon even on items not on the agenda. But in high profile public bodies with TV cameras present, officials are understandably reluctant to say anything that could be interpreted as a violation of the Open Meeting Act.

Compared to Open Meeting laws around the U.S., Oklahoma's is quite strict. Items of business adopted in violation of the law are not simply voidable, they are automatically void. Penalties on public officials result in up to a $500 fine and up to a year in jail, not to mention the political fallout.
Many officials would feel far more comfortable if the law specifically authorized them to correct any misinformation included in public comments, to refer an item to staff, or schedule it for a future meeting.

Opposition was also encountered by those that did indeed want to REQUIRE public comment time. About a half dozen states, as diverse as California, Nebraska, and Vermont, do require public bodies to allow members of the public to comment. Lynn Powell heads up an advocacy group for the families of prison inmates and is a walking encyclopedia of valuable information, but the Corrections Board will not take time to listen to her comments. She and others could make a compelling case for allowing the public the RIGHT to be heard, but that was not the purpose of this bill.

HB-1670 had actually passed the House and was ready to pass the Senate. But in a statesmanlike move, House author Curt Roggow of Enid asked that the bill be returned to the conference committee for further study. "Sometimes public perception and the law don't mix," Roggow commented to the Enid News and Eagle. "In no way was it designed to restrict public participation. Public comments are the life blood of all levels of government and these are the very comments that provide direction for the future of our schools, cities, and water boards among others. My intention has never been to disturb this vital flow of information, but, to clarify language that has been established through precedents set by public bodies and the Attorney Generals office on the Open Meeting Act."

Can the process of public comments in open meetings be improved? Should public comments be required with the public having a RIGHT to be heard in such meetings? Who knows what will happen? It's all part of the privilege and responsibility we have in our government of the people, by the people, and for the people!

Education for Freedom: Lessons on the First Amendment

Guess what - you have exercised your First Amendment rights! A scavenger hunt sheet with these questions and others like them was recently given to education majors at Southern Nazarene University. The object was to obtain signatures from others in the class who could answer "yes" to one of the questions. NO one was able to get signatures in all of the spaces.

The scavenger hunt was an eye-opener for many to the First Amendment. It goes beyond freedom of speech and religion.

Rita Geiger, trainer for Education for Freedom and FOI Oklahoma board member, presented lessons on the 1st Amendment recently to education classes at SNU.

The hands-on lessons are easy to implement. The strategies used in the lessons are always well received because they help teachers get students actively engaged in the learning process, as well as develop students' critical thinking skills. The lessons include all of the rights protected under the First Amendment and can be used in a variety of subjects, including elementary social studies, middle school social studies and English and high school social studies, English and journalism.

Students were pleased that the lessons on the religion establishment and free exercise clauses were presented in a balanced manner. They especially enjoyed the lesson on interpreting political cartoons and the one where they had to determine if the speech in a scenario was protected or not.

Future plans for Education for Freedom presentations include a workshop during the State Department of Education's Curriculum and Assessment Conference scheduled for July 21, 2003 and the OCPS social studies seminar on August 22 - elementary teachers in the morning and secondary in the afternoon.

There are workshops scheduled in the fall for student teachers at area universities. For more inf. contact Rita Geiger at rgeier@cox.net