OKLAHOMA CITY — For better and for worse, a nearly four-decade-old memory still has a hold on county government in Oklahoma.
Terry Simonson, who represents Tulsa County’s interests at the state Capitol, thinks the Legislature should loosen that grip just a little.
“We can’t even do the most mundane stuff without (legislative) permission,” Simonson said Tuesday following a presentation to a House of Representatives’ interim study on county commissioners.
Simonson used his time to advocate for giving counties the authority to enact ordinances much like municipal governments do now. Most, he said, would deal with administrative matters and “would not affect anyone outside the courthouse.”
He reminded legislators that a bill had to be legislated last year to allow county clerks to alter the margin widths on official documents, and he said state law continues to intrude into such things as county code enforcement and how sheriff’s deputies guard hospitalized jail inmates.
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“When I would bring one of these bills, one of you would always say, ‘Why ask us?’” Simonson said.
The restraints on county government are so deeply ingrained that Simonson said he suspects most people are only vaguely aware of why they exist.
The short answer is that in the early 1980s Oklahoma county government exploded in what is still often called the largest public corruption scandal in U.S. history. Prosecutors won more than 230 convictions on charges stemming from kickback schemes involving falsified invoices and equipment purchases.
The scandal led to some legislative reforms and to tighter enforcement of existing laws. The result has been, as state Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd said at Tuesday’s hearing, “very extreme laws” for transparency and oversight, “more so than for any other level of government.”
Simonson said he doesn’t want to pull back any of that but does think lawmakers need to recognize that county governments are changing.
In particular, he noted that the state’s 77 counties range in population from 2,160 (Cimarron) to nearly 800,000 (Oklahoma) and that half of the state’s nearly 4 million people live in just five of those counties.
“The problem is that we haven’t been looking at all the options,” Simonson told lawmakers.
Some of his ideas go back to the concept of county home rule, which generally means giving counties more autonomy to operate as they see fit.
Tulsa County officials have advocated for home rule off and on for decades, and although Simonson was involved with it in the late 1970s, he said that isn’t what he’s talking about.
“People think there are only two choices: what we’ve got and county home rule,” he told the committee. “And that’s not true.”
Government should be about efficient administration, Simonson said. Function, not form.
The good news for legislators, he said, is that giving Oklahoma counties — or Tulsa County, anyway — a little more leeway would mean more time for lawmakers to spend on things that matter to their constituents.
“None of you ever campaigned saying, ‘Vote for me. I changed the margins on official county documents.’”
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