Sooner State News

Emails between the Oklahoma State Department of Health and the state’s Director of Statewide Accounting officials appear to discuss using federal Covid relief funds to pay expenses at a downtown office building.

The exchanges occurred between Oklahoma’s Director of Statewide Accounting Diana O’Neal and Jenni Pratt, Director of Statewide Accounting at Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services and others handling state finances.

An email from O’Neal to Pratt included Jill Geiger, former State Budget Director Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services and Brandy Manek, Director of Budget, Policy and Communications at Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services.

In that correspondence, O’Neal noted, "We need to transfer money from 289 to 210 for the $11.3 m and $7M building purchases."

The 289 fund is for Cares Act payroll reimbursement account monies. The $7 million was earmarked for the Public Health Lab purchase.

In another, the group discusses a way to use payroll funding for expenses at the controversial Public Health Lab in the Sandridge building owned by the Oklahoma Commissioners of the Land Office.

"Please prepare this document to include the expenses to the Sandridge purchase (once it hits the 210 fund Monday – see earlier email) on $11.3 and PHL purchase of $7M. We can go head and transfer money for all the other Sandridge purchases that are paid or can you do all of those later once they are finalized. Either way is fine with with me. If there is. Need for that additional $3.7M now, we can do what is finished now. The max to be requested for this is $15M even," O’Neal wrote in the email.

Those and other expenditures authored by the Gov. Kevin Stitt administration – some of which were flagged in a state audit – have many asking the governor to not spend any more federal money until the accounts have appropriate oversight.

The Public Health Lab has been controversial and generated sparring in the political class.

In a January report, The Norman Transcript noted despite opposition from the state legislature, O’Neal used $2.9 million of the funding to fund mobile lab trailers until the building was prepared for use.

Stitt has been under considerable scrutiny for the way Covid funds have been spent by his administration, including from the state’s top auditor.

Due to a lack of well-defined policies and procedures at the time, pandemic spending was inconsistent and "made in violation of the Oklahoma Constitution," according to a February report by the Oklahoma State Auditor Cindy Byrd.

The audit critical of Stitt was buried for months before Auditor CindyByrd said its release was triggered by an open records request.

"I believe all public records should be open and easily accessible to the taxpayers," Byrd said in releasing the audit.

Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) has also asked for more supervision and accountability in the pandemic assistance budget.

According to a March 17 press release, Lankford called for more openness and accountability for all COVID relief funding during a recent Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee meeting.

"We’re still trying to get answers to questions of what has been spent and what category," Lankford said at the hearing. "So, some pretty basic things."

Read the emails HERE.