By RANDY KREHBIEL World Staff Writer on Jul 11, 2013, at 2:24 AM??Updated on 7/11/13 at 2:48 AM
Doug Cox: The GOP state representative from Grove was adamant that he thought Gov. Fallin was ruling by executive order, comparing her actions to those of President Barack Obama.
VINITA - A Republican legislator lashed out at Gov. Mary Fallin on Wednesday, comparing her at one point to President Barack Obama and suggesting that her use of taxpayer-funded business incentives amounts to bribery."We all like to badmouth Washington, D.C., and we all enjoy badmouthing President Obama," said Rep. Doug Cox, R-Grove. "One of the things we say about him is that he is bypassing Congress and ruling by executive order.
"It seems to me we have a little bit of Washington, D.C., right here. Gov. Fallin is bypassing the Legislature and ruling by executive order."
"I have asked my neighbor to stop referring to the governor as 'Mary Hussein Fallin,' " Cox added.
Speaking at a GRDA board meeting Wednesday, Cox's remarks were in response to Fallin's order on Monday creating a 15-member GRDA task force whose members will be appointed by Fallin.
Cox said the GRDA employs 500 people in northeastern Oklahoma - including Cox's son - at no cost to taxpayers, while "the governor will spend tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money ... to basically bribe companies to come to Oklahoma."
Fallin, the GRDA and GRDA's CEO Dan Sullivan have been at daggers since at least a year ago, when the GRDA bought an east Tulsa office building without consulting her.
More recently, she has made known her opposition to GRDA plans for a new natural gas-fired electricity-generation plant to replace the older of its two coal-fired plants.
Approval of a 400-megawatt, $450-million plant was to be voted on Wednesday, but the item was withdrawn from the agenda late Tuesday.
Fallin, her top troubleshooter, Preston Doerflinger, and Sullivan are to meet next week to discuss the matter.
Doerflinger, who attended Wednesday's meeting, said Cox's suggestion that Fallin intends to sell the GRDA or turn it into a "pot of gold" to pay for an income tax cut are not true.
"I didn't hear anything Doug said that was remotely close to the truth about the governor's motives," he said.
Doerflinger, whose official titles are state finance secretary and director of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services, has also been acting as energy secretary following the resignation of Michael Ming two months ago.
"When we finally make the appointments to this task force, I think people will see it's not going to be 15 Mary Fallins," Doerflinger said, referring to a Tulsa World editorial cartoon depicting just that.
Cox' outburst touched on something of a sore subject: the Fallin administration's aggressive consolidation of authority in the Governor's Office.
"It's the governor's job to be involved," Doerflinger said. "A lot of states are not used to such an active governor."
Certainly Oklahoma is not.
Historically, power has been concentrated in the Legislature and state agencies.
That said, Fallin is not the first governor to try to rein in the GRDA, a state agency that receives no tax dollars and has tended to operate with a high degree of independence.
Sullivan said progress is being made in resolving differences with the administration, despite Wednesday's decision to delay a vote on the new generating plant until at least August.
"The governor giving us a two-hour block of time next week is a sign of how important this is to her," he said.
Late Monday, the GRDA and the Governor's Office received a report from consulting engineers firm SAIC that generally supported the GRDA proposal as the most cost-effective option.
While directors did not vote Wednesday on the proposed new power plant, they did approve spending up to $17.3 million for engineering and construction management services related to major improvements to emissions controls on the newer of the GRDA coal-fired plants.
Those upgrades are expected to cost $86 million over the next three years. Doerflinger said Fallin has no objection to the upgrades.
Randy Krehbiel 918-581-8365
randy.krehbiel@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Lawmaker hits Fallin on GRDA
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