News Watch Oklahoma: May 16, 2022

[Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] uh newswatch oklahoma hi there you are good to see you scott mitchell here bringing in my co-host who have roped into doing this uh all the way from norman oklahoma usa jeff dismukes we're going to bring in barry mangold right away because he's busy i mean when you we're going to be talking about the legislative session specifically about swaddlies i think about 7 30 and the tour we should call it the tourism probe of the swaddliest pro and then about 7 30 or so we're going to be talking to the a and b chief of the house ryan martinez about the budget obviously is also chair of that tourism committee which met last week and there he is right on the key and by the way it's go ahead and type something for us barry i mean but this is all right i don't know how you've got your camera set up but watch these fingers boom i mean this is this right here this this is intense right i know i don't know words a minute i don't know who described who designed these laptops with the camera at the very bottom of the laptop screen but it is it's awkward it's not the first time that typing something has made as scared whoever i'm on the zoom call with but yeah that's kind of cool well he's busy and so we're going to get him we're going to we're going to wring out the news out of baron mango i got to tell you i've watched streams over the years and you have people that do the they are they'll run the laptop up so the bottom half of their head is wider than the top half of their head and you're looking up their nostrils you see that stuff all the time i mean we may have to look at your manicure very but at least a little bit if i ever have to look up any notes then everybody's going to be getting a whole lot of knuckle all right okay so can you tease your 10 o'clock tonight what you're going to be talking about uh yeah so i um before i even get to the 10 o'clock just a little okay i i sometimes need to kind of just wrap my head around the timing of all this so uh before i get to just today's update just a reminder at the end of march is kind of when we first started hearing about all of all of this and that was the first kind of loft report that we heard where we heard about this kind of ignore out of uh these peculiar spending with uh swadley's foggy bottom kitchen that was kind of when we had the first meeting about it fast forward to the end of april the state has abruptly cancelled its contract with swaddlies over 200 people are out of the job uh and everybody's lawyered up and jerry winchester resigns as the director of tourism now today you have a ongoing house investigation you mentioned representative ryan martinez is going to be on he is leading that also dealing with the budget but you'll talk about that later i uh and now the house investigation in in addition to other investigations the house is looking into all right what what how did this spending happen what was the procedure who was in charge of approving these expenditures and all that that's kind of the main question for the house and for the legislatures to figure out the finances of all this and today the frontier puts out a a really interesting article showcasing one email exchange between lieutenant governor matt pannell who is also the secretary of tourism as well as the now former director of finance at tourism catherine nichols and in this email exchange lieutenant governor matt pannell or here secretary of tourism panel he's kind of acting in that capacity is approving of a 1.5 million dollar payment to swadley's there's no attached invoices there's no attached receipts and panel says approved in in so many words in an email back to ca to uh then finance director nichols and that is kind of at the heart of this house probe how was this money approved of how was it spent and last week on thursday we heard from the director of the loft group again they get first group that we heard from the end of march he essentially mike jackson exactly he essentially had a round two with lawmakers specifically focusing this time on swaddlies rather than its kind of review of the tourism department at home he had this round two on thursday where people in the committee had a much more more time to kind of think of questions and ask more appointed questions about this contract and he and mike jackson said one of the most uh one of the more kind of uh one of the more noteworthy things he said was that if if this state department of tourism recreation had if only they had had controls in place for how this money was spent it would have saved oklahoma taxpayers 12.4 million dollars remind you this whole thing the money that they're looking at the total of it is about nearly 17 million dollars 16.7 maybe up to 17

according to mike jackson so most of this money could have been saved if the proper controls were in place that is what mike jackson said last week that's what's really at the uh certainly a focus for lawmakers and now today we have this email exchange where lieutenant governor pinel approves a 1.5 million dollar payment without any in invoice attached to it in all fairness i heard from today i heard today from lieutenant governor my panel's office and uh his spokesperson is telling me uh real quick let me just get on my notes let me just get some notes up i um but yeah it's uh lieutenant governor panel's um communications uh director was telling me that uh he is not the first person to receive these invoices and uh here's how she put it in all cases there are prior levels of accountability and approval that must occur before these invoices hit the lieutenant governor's desk at the time of the invoice in question this specific email that it was reported on the lieutenant governor had full faith in the agency director and trusted he had properly vetted the information that referring to jerry winchester who resigned over this uh over this deal so that's kind of the the the scene that's being set today uh representative martinez who you'll hear from uh said that they plan on talking to the senate governor panel he was always a public supporter of the swadley's deal he was in the commercials he was uh he was he was a public supporter about it now it's uh everyone is looking to re so so as i was saying martinez said we kind of had we we planned on talking to lieutenant governor this revelation means that we probably should talk to him sooner rather than later so pennell is now becoming more from a supporter standpoint and this email just shows a little bit of his day-to-day involvement or his more direct involvement in this deal with swadley's we'll see where it goes with the house but uh that's certainly the uh it's much more of a scene center to the upcoming conversations that we'll hopefully have with panel and these are the lawmakers at public hearings under uh under oath uh testifying about the situation do you know when they'll have another one of those hearings not this week uh martinez was saying that this week is all budget they're just dedicated to that they're they're working all that out they will be staying after budget uh uh or after session uh ends uh well in the interim phase they will be here they will still be holding meetings so as early as next week but might be a week or two after that is my guess not this week is something i can tell you for sure can you tell where this committee's headed or what they forget about all the other reporting and you're sitting there watching this and you talk with people where they're headed so i mean what they've just covered so far is to put it we did hear some new things in last week's meeting with mike jackson but we had already heard from mike jackson going forward if we hear from anybody else they will be a new voice in this whether it is the state management enterprise services department uh and or uh or certain contractors that are subcontractors that swadley's hired to go together a lot of things that we've been hearing rumors about is kind of the demeanor that swadley's in the tourism department had while spending all this money they were renovating and opening up six restaurants in the middle of a pandemic with supply chain issues no doubt it's a challenging endeavor what was the attitude with taxpayer dollars what was their approach to that was there any sense of we have a blank check from the state don't we don't care about it was there any blatant embezzlement going on the state auditor's office and the osbi are both investigating ideas of uh accusations of over the of swadli's overcharging the state we haven't heard from swaddlies in this whole ordeal but that's one of the accusations that's been thrown out there really the focus from the lawmakers perspective is cert it is certainly more focused on or at least so far it has been focused on the tourism department at the end of the day it was the state that gave out that money not neces and and swadley was was it was contracted to be reimbursed for all of its operating costs be uh it was also um you know operating costs monthly management fees and covering all the capital improvements all the you know all the renovations and improvements the property that it made that's what those were all included in the contract there are some things that weren't included in the contract that are certainly subject to questioning no one is is innocent here i know that one kind of one thing that i've been trying to grapple with myself is all right who what where where is the investigation pointed is it at the tourism department or is it at swadley's safe to say both that that is the the one thing that is still i would say the uh the least defined of is like who did what what is the wrong doing that we're trying that that people are trying to nail down on on both sides of this and safe to say nothing is ruled out we still have a lot of information to go through and a lot of emails apparently but it's uh yeah i think that going forward you're going to hear a lot of different voices that being state officials like lieutenant governor matt pannell but also whistleblowers people that used to work there or used to work for swadley's or the tourism department we just heard whistleblowers we don't know where they're from but those people are are coming up next and uh we don't know exactly when or if it'll be public with those folks but those are going to be the people certainly people that we haven't heard from yet um everybody in this saga every person is connected with exception of one group to politics agree when you've got you've talked about the osbi which is run by rick jackson maybe the best they've ever been okay they work for the governor the governor lieutenant governor now you've they brought up the auditor inspector you know auditor inspectors over the years tend to enjoy the limelight on a situation like that another elected official there's all these elected officials only one elected non-elected person in this in this game only one that's prince and he's the most lawyer though okay and then well i was just going to say number two to this point we've not heard from them and the statement that they've made so far they've denied any wrongdoing and when i was reading um per your suggestion about a week ago very go back and look at just kind of the fundamentals and when i read you know the person that signed that let that termination letter you remember who it was that signed the termination letter it's jerry winchester it's no longer an officer which appears to me to be at least the day before or the day or really close by there whenever that they fired swadley's i terminated the contract rather and then he's out the door but it's very clear in that language what jerry winchester said in that letter he used we're investigating political corruption now anybody who doesn't think that this thing's aimed at swadley's right now they're not playing that's what's happening here okay even jerry winchester said there was corruption now spotless hadn't had a chance to respond yet and you know we've seen this i remember the time that um i don't say anybody i'm not i don't know what's happening here here's what i do know is that there has been seems to me a real rush to judgment here starting with that winchester letter pointing the finger at the swaddly folks so i guess some of the what bothers me when i see this happening is this real rush to judgment and these guys haven't got to say anything yet your thoughts about where that company is today i mean at some point that you will hear from them but man they they are the one everybody's pointing fingers at them as everybody else gets out of the way is is that objectively correct you can't help but think about timing with this situation but it because this is an election year the governor running and there's that one report first reported by fox 25 about that fire st the the state fire marshal report where swat uh brent swadley was quoted mentioning governor stick ever since then i have not been able to get they've changed pr people or communications people as well during this but since then i haven't been able to get a comment from swaddlies on the record and i think they recognize the timing of this and the political fervor in the moment and with and within everyone that they're dealing with you're absolutely right that we have not heard from swaddlings in this this is it's absolutely i think if i think the soonest we will ever hear from someone representing swaddlies will be under subpoena in a house in a public house hearing i think that is the only situation where we hear about this from swadley's before the november election because i think it is such a political thing that's happening right now there are there's already attack ads out related to this on candidates and so i do know but as you mentioned so far what they've put out is that they have denied all wrongdoing and that they've shared before and after pictures with each of the six restaurant sites that they worked on and they said these were gross they these were these were not in good shape when we arrived here and we renovated them made them look gorgeous opened up really great restaurants employed over 200 people all in the middle of a pandemic in a matter of months it's if you think about the scale of the project it's certainly going to come with a big price tag i think at the end of the day you're going to wonder all right why did the legislature have have very like little idea of the contents or the context of this agreement that's a question for the department of tourism why why was schwadley's promised so many benefits in their contract it's a question for tourism and why were expense expenditures signed off on after they were like there are so many details about how the money was approved by the state that got a lot of attention from lawmakers in that hearing last week all of it was from the kind of the standpoint of what was happening at tourism who was silent who who was signing off on on these decisions you could tell that was definitely the majority those were the questions for majority of lawmakers that was certainly the i would say chief focus of the roughly hour and a half two hour long hearing that we had last week and that being said i know there's there's questions of all right when does omes the office management remember our services when did they come in and and say what's going on with this vendor what's happening it's it's it's um it's really like one detail that's just coming to mind right now like we learned that swadley's hired 59 subcontractors to to do work or to provide services for swadley's foggy bottom kitchen and and that the state department of tourism ended up reimbursing for none of those subcontractors were approved by the state department of tourism like what was that meant to be part of the process that was again i mean it wouldn't happen it went on for almost for over just over two years so what who was approving that at the state department of tourism was anyone approving that if not why and and so it really certainly the burden of a lot of the burden of establishing why this was worth it why the terms of the contract were worth it certainly are in the arena of the tourism department certainly the ball is in their court there are definitely aspects of certain expenditures in certain that like for for a number of invoices there were management fees and consulting fees which were percentages based off of each individual purchase that really that raised a lot of eyebrows that the state paid but like so like so one example for uh i'll kind of leave last example i'll go over here is that uh during last week's meeting they they talked about one expense the premier homes is one subcontractor that swadley's brought in to do work on one of the buildings at state parks i'm i'm get the numbers are summed up so don't quote me here but it was about fifty thousand dollars worth of work on which premier homes tacked on a twenty thousand dollar fee and swadley's paid it and then invoiced the state that amount plus fifteen percent management fee fifteen percent consulting fee uh the fifteen percent i throw up just now as an example those ranged for these are several invoices somewhere between like five and fifteen percent on each so in total swadley's talked on between five and about thirty or thirty five percent added fees for those expenses so 50 000 of the work ends up becoming a 100 000 fee for the state department of tourism details like that breaking down who approved each of those things and who just signed off that's going to be the focus a lot for for house lawmakers and uh we'll hopefully see it play out sometime soon but i know they got a lot of work with the budget to do in the meantime too a lot of this is as i've been looking at this a lot closer when i see stories about the fire marshall story see that i heard there was one of the organizations wrote that they were having discussions with swaddy before the rfe was led and and i'm not reading that in wall street journal and i'm not looking at that those are reporters that are not business reporters okay so i don't know what the standard operating procedure is on things like that a lot of this is we're talking about business practices in a political world very much and it becomes apples and oranges sometimes now breaking the law is black and white right right but the fact is there's this this is that i've seen this a hundred times you get yourself a semi-business story the political writers jump on present company excluded okay and a lot of things that happen in business with entrepreneurs is foreign to um political writers let's just let's face it all right it doesn't mean that they're wrong it's just that this is two different worlds and if this was a private partnership i'm sure there's nothing that went on here that would make people bat nigh and uh but but at the end of the day it's it's coming down the state like the taxpayers are the ones that are paying are the ones on the hook at the end of all this so yeah you're absolutely right that some of these practices may not seem like the most scandalous thing in terms of scandals this is the first time in five years that the house has formed a special investigative committee to look into something like this and and although it might not it's it's not the for lack of a better phrase sexiest scandal but it's it's certainly got a lot of people wondering how in the how in the world was this allowed to happen in the first place it has to do with the power and authority one thing that's interesting is that uh when the governor kind of announced jerry winchester's resignation and their own lawsuit against swaddlies uh what swedley's foggy bottom kitchen mind you not swadli's barbecue but he also announced that lieutenant governor pannell will be taking a more hands-on approach with the department of tourism and governor panel a few days later put out a statement saying i would like authority to be returned from the executive director position to the tourism commission position which is essentially taking power from one person and spreading it out over a board those are the kind of conversations where you get into a lot of political power a lot of political and implications it's not the sexiest scandal but it really means a lot in terms of how the escape how the state runs and how taxpayer dollars are used and would it would a commission would a board have approved that contract with swadley's we don't know but jerry winchester did so that's all it took for it for for the ball to get rolling so you bring i know you've got to go but you hit something on the head all right when this governor came in legislature that first session for people that it's not that far back the legislature is very accommodating in doing away with some of the boards and commissions the idea was a business leaders will bring a certain business acumen here they can make quicker decisions and the buck stops here that sort of thing yeah and i think that there's just an assumption but based upon talking to a lot of them something like that might get some traction now i mean there this legislature specialized two years is not going to give this governor more autonomy in some of these when you look at did away not not during his administration where they did away at the health board did away with several other these some of these other boards and some of the boards they've done away with have been in constant turmoil and you know a lot of people going like a committee if you want to make something never get solved to give a committee and so that's the reason why people say get rid of the committees and let people take care of it it's a fascinating conversation which is a long long way from being resolved but i just got to tell you i think you've brought up one thing which i think we'll hear from the other camp a long time before the election the reason is because of that lawsuit that was filed absolutely so i mean there's litigation out there i don't think that it'll i just think we'll hear from them sooner than later and it will be interesting and that and it will a lot of these things a lot of these bedrock principles that have been established in the reporting and this happened this happened this happened if that's not true then the narrative changes really quickly if something was if a whistleblower said this and it wasn't true an investigation ensued i'm just saying i've seen this before back in the 90s whenever governor keating bought an airplane the democrats were in control the legislative session at that time they went after him over that thing right and that thing they couldn't wait to get done tulsa beachcraft and the people that sold that airplane they were accused of all kinds of stuff hey no final report no draft was ever published and the guy who was accused of being a bad guy the next year was appointed to the regents running the senate okay and it absolutely was a bogus deal now this is not a bogus deal okay that one was bogus but to think that this hasn't happened in the in the past and here's why you've got charles mccall and ryan martinez and righteous people running at this time and not that the ds weren't righteous at the time they wanted to get even the frank keating and that's what that was all about and a businessman got caught in the middle and was completely exonerated in that so yeah for those old-timers have been around this for a while we've seen that happen but it it will be interesting to see where it goes absolutely all right well we'll just say here's what we'll do we'll grade you in just a moment with mark with uh uh chair martinez about yeah please let me let me know how i did all right how long is that he'll have bad things to say about you i'm sure that happens okay before let me just bring him in real quick so you guys can say hi while you're going by uh mr chair man goal was to show you his typing ability go for it yeah let me just show you let me take some notes over here all right i'm going to take some notes there we go all right barry thanks so very much we'll uh we'll ask all those questions and we'll tell the chair all the bad things you said about him all right yeah let me leave first though all right okay hey by the way uh you're 10 o'clock did we tease that uh yeah it's it's uh so we did it so it's kind of following up on this report from the frontier that uh shows an email exchange uh that kind of gets at the root question of the of of chair martinez's uh or chair martinez's uh uh committee where he is uh kind of trying to track down where uh the funding of this uh how the funding flowed in in the capital in the state department of tourism and uh yeah and well more more tonight at 10 and i'll let him explain uh the rest sounds great all right barry mango thanks for being on top of this story we'll be talking to you a lot thank you see you barry yeah all right there it goes and just i mean this was you cannot believe jeff how that the chair martinez was bam in there is there anything that you do want to say i haven't let jeff say a word i want him to jump in just a second but anything that before you get to budget that you want people to know about the committee that's looking into the tourism situation uh yeah sure so um as you know we had our first meeting last thursday we were we were able to have a good conversation with loft director mike jackson uh the point of that meeting was just to have kind of a starting point and the legislative office of fiscal transparency they're actually uh the organization that discovered the discrepancies and started asking questions so we wanted to visit with him as to what kind of made the the sirens and all the red flags start going off and i think we accomplished that um he also turned over quite a few documents that uh community committee members are reviewing as we speak to just kind of talk about um some of the processes and some of the things that just weren't adding up um and then we also got to talk to brandy manic who is a part of omes's staff uh the committee actually uh subpoenaed steve harp to attend but he left town he was out of town and uh so we talked to brandy manic we had some interesting conversations about omes's role and oversight of state dollars and how they're moving um i do uh think and i assure you that we will continue to try to get steve harp the director of omes to come and have a conversation with the committee where we go next i think what you'll see is uh we're gonna get through this week we are working on a budget i promise my committee members that i'll have will allow them to focus on that um then we will probably come back hopefully next week but we'll be working throughout the interim having meetings in our special committee meeting um we're working on the process i think we have something figured out to protect the anonymous whistleblowers that'll come out and i think the committee will be visiting with those people very soon and kind of hearing their story and uh kind of trying to find out why they have felt they have uh been put in position where they need to be be anonymous um a lot of them have told me that they have felt very threatened and uh bullied in a lot of ways so we're gonna get to the bottom of that and our committee committee will just continue to go where the evidence takes us let me ask you this as i totally agree with all of that what if a whistleblower is not only up and up uh it'd be interesting it'd be interesting to see um you know i have seen some that have reached out to me um that have wanted to share information and i visited with them and it sounded more like complaints from a disciplined with employee and things like that i think what kind of happens there is um i think what our committee has noticed with some or what i have noticed so far with some of the whistleblowers as i'm noticing uh patterns and i think that's what we need to to focus on um you know there's always going to be somebody that might be upset with an agency or a former employer or something that they something that it turned out the way that they wish it would have uh but i think it's really the patterns when you start hearing the patterns of kind of some of the same stories from subcontractors from former state employees where it's some of the same names keep popping up and some of the same accusations i think it'd be foolish not to take those very seriously okay well i know that what dismix and i really want to know is usually we're getting close to needing to have a budget yeah and i'm just wondering how that's going it's going really well so we've been busy uh of working and visiting with uh you know the the senate and kind of hearing about what they're talking about visiting with the governor's office i spent the whole weekend up here along with many others i'm still at the capitol building i have a meeting at 8 30 that will continue our conversation um so maybe my wife is watching or listening to this and she'll know i'm still alive so that'll be good but uh so we're getting very close i mean obviously we have to be out of here by next friday constitutionally with a balanced budget passed um we will have a joint committee on appropriations and budget tomorrow um and i think you'll start to see a lot of the limits bills and things like that and start to see the forming of what the budget actually looks like it's going to be i do want to say that for late in the day you look amazingly refreshed and cool under pressure well um i wish i could say is because i was taking a nap but um this is the first time i've sat down all day so don't be surprised if i fall asleep that's honestly that's okay indication of me uh being bored with you or anything else it's just uh i get sleepy sometimes we have sound effects that could help i like it all right well this gets into jeff's area the leader reckless was talking the other day about first responders doing something for department of public safety that was all taken care of of course obviously with jeff and i we talk a lot we have stream a couple times a month uh talking about behavioral health yeah for the folks who are looking at that know there's been a priority for the house leadership of course um where are we at yeah so i think that uh folks that will be very encouraged and excited to see um where we're putting our resources on those that are doing jobs that to keep us all safe and uh you know keep us in a place where we can uh feel safe when we go home at night um they deserve a pay raise um i think you're gonna be happy to see that they have received a pay raise um and that will keep those uh those industries and those jobs more competitive so we can continue to attract talented people um into those positions to keep us all safe so um i feel really good about that um those people that deserve it um will be very happy with the budget that they see one thing i've noticed with you guys the um your interest in behavioral health has really grown especially over the years which is really encouraging for me uh to see how this has happened really what's the what's the motivating factor here is it just a an increased understanding are you seeing different opportunities to invest and and get a good return on investment yeah so i think all the above i mean i think as a society there's been a lot of acceptance of the the validity of you know of different mental mental situations and and different uh causes for different things so i think we've as a society have started to accept some of those diagnoses and some of the behavioral health that people deal with as true diseases so i think that helps but um you just flip on your news and you could see you know maybe a situation that would ended up differently if somebody could have got services that they needed um or had some kind of intervention prior to being you know on their last which end and being involved in something i think everyone is realizing the connection between recidivism and crime and a lot of behavioral health issues that you see going to any school and talk to any administrator or any principal and ask them what they spend most of their time dealing with and most of the time it's a behavior a behavioral health issue um so i think that just starting to recognize those things you know i think about even when i was a kid in school it was that kid that was you know causing trouble they were just a bad kid right and they needed to be punished instead of realizing hey there might really be something wrong here that we need to address so i think just the cognizance of our society to realize that hey this is a real issue and it's a treatable issue it's something that we could work on with the right intervention getting to the bottom what's going on so i think the people in this building realize that and knowing that it's something that uh can change a trajectory of somebody's life if you intervene in a powerful and early way i think that people will continue to fund and also realize how important that is right so you folks are sitting at the table with the ds and the governor's office is over here how do you do you try to get work some of that with the senate first and then talk to the executive how are those processes those breakfasts the speaker of the protesters you know my internet connection but you're breaking up sorry i couldn't understand what you're saying well that's okay i i will repeat here um if you can hear me and now you're hearing okay ryan you're good i got you out it happens on these live streams sometimes yeah um how does this work when you're trying to bring the exec the senate together to do an agreement do you work with the senate first and then bring the executive and how does it work so you know i i think that people oftentimes forget that the very first person that weighs in on a budget is the gov is the executive branch that first day of session the state of the state is very much rolling out the ideas that they have for the budget um they pass out budget documents to the members of the legislature first review they have ideas they get to make those ideas public um later on in the process it became an opportunity for the house and the senate to work together to talk about what our priorities were what our caucuses wanted to do what we were hearing from our constituents on a daily basis so you know we were in a room talking literally going line by line talking about how important um you know you name any programming in any agency what that looked like um the ideas that the agency had and what they would do with x amount of dollars if they had it and then at the end here we bring the we bring the executive back in so the executive is back in getting to finally see what we talked about minds we've already seen what the executive wants on the very first day session so then we start comparing notes and seeing what that looks like and um the thing that i i know that we have a good compromise is i don't think every anybody got everything they wanted but i do think everybody probably got something that they wanted in this budget so that means you're working what primarily senator bingman whenever you're bringing the exec in i'm losing you again here scott it's it happens all the time is that me primarily do you work with senator bayman from the executive in the governor's office i think we're just having an audio uh ryan if you see if you begin to hear me you gotta know there you go that sounds better yeah it's uh just it's uh logan phillips let's just blame him okay i mean he's the broadbands are right this is uh i say forget rural internet we have enough problems right here in the cities that's for for real let me shift to one more thing in case we start to lose you on this project ocean okay that was something we thought maybe we'd have an answer to kansas's uh you know media i mean like a new shiny thing off to something else right but kansas is up to the ante somewhat we haven't heard the board hasn't acted and you guys were hoping to have some idea about where they were going to go because you needed to budget a big chunk of money in that how are you going to handle that now yeah so you know i think that there was a lot of wisdom in the way that we actually formed how we would appropriate project ocean so first of all what we did in legislation is we created a separate account um we haven't put any money in that account at this point um hoping and eagerly and anticipating that there'd be a big announcement and we'd have this great project coming to oklahoma like you mentioned that hasn't happened up to this point um so what we did with that account is we are able to appropriate money into that account but it can't be spent until certain things happen there are a lot of guardrails there so you know this is a company that is saying that they're going to create at least 4 000 jobs well they don't get any portion of that quality jobs uh funding unless they actually meet that threshold um you know they're saying their cap x is three three to four billion dollars well unless that money is spent and put into facilities here in oklahoma they don't get any of that money so um what i do think you'll see happen is that money will be appropriated to uh that fund however it's not going to that company unless they come here for one and two meet all of those requirements that we put into safeguards so um and you know if say that money's put into that account and that company decides they're going to kansas or wherever else we're able to claw that money back and put it right back in the special cast and spend it for things that uh matter to oklahomans so if june the 10th the board of directors at panasonic which is the worst kept secret in the world it's panasonic sure they decide to go forward with that how do you how do you move that day so i think i i imagine that the money is sitting in that account and i think as they start meeting those thresholds and the guard roles i put in there they will start having access to those dollars but you know i will say there was a lot of wisdom in the creation of how we did this um i think learned learning the hard way from the past and things that happened so many times it's this idea of hey let's get this great tax credit this company is going to do all these wonderful things we give them the money up front and then they don't deliver that can't happen in this deal because of the safeguards that are put within say panasonic comes here and they only create 500 jobs that's great we're happy to have the final 500 jobs but they're not living up to their end of the deal therefore they won't be receiving the money that is in that account so there are a lot of guardrails there i think the money will be in that account ready for when they actually uh start meeting those thresholds and it'll be exciting for oklahoma one more question if you can still hear me uh canoe for those of us who follow the financial pages pretty clearly the canoe said a week ago their ceo so i think he was trying to scare up some money but frankly it was an odd way of doing it again scott all right we're testing one two three testing one two three logan phillips is not doing his job logan because i think we've lost have you got me now i think that we have we've gotten logan phillips on this deal well representative we'll let you go so here's what we'll do is we're going to do this still can't hear you that's okay we're going to go okay we'll see you very soon i'll talk i'll talk to you later thank you okay thank you thanks for having me you bet good to see you friend you too i've never ended an interview that way no never so what i was going to ask him and i will get around to that at some point which is basically what happens if canoe goes under right and i don't know who's on the hook for that or if that money's already appropriate i don't know we'll we'll find that's another another show all right so finally after all this time of jeff hanging around um what have you heard tonight that's intriguing to you actually several things they um you know and and i gotta say i was really impressed with barry i was listening to barry kind of outline how he's covering this story um and and it's impressive the way he's looking at things as you can tell he's looking at all the different sides and pulling information together definitely going to follow him uh and what he's doing uh on this and his reporting on this because it's uh i think we're gonna get really good information from him and he's giving it a lot of thought so i was really impressed with that the other thing that i heard tonight is that we're working on a budget and getting really close to that budget you know there were a lot of discussions uh when you had representative echols i saw in hot seat this weekend of course he's talking mental health and that's what i'm interested in this time of year we're moving up on the budget where are we going with the budget for mental health services talking about the different services for first responders uh in trying to reach into that community i hope will that will also help a little bit and maybe reach into what's happening with workforce development and behavioral health and within medicine and a couple of really big topics but but i have been impressed with the attention that the legislature has been given to these issues over the last several years there's a lot of people have been working on that and trying to raise that education but it also takes those legislators really embracing it so uh to hear uh representatives speaking about it this weekend again on hot seat it's a topic here tonight it's a topic but we're talking about budget i'm really encouraged by that i do think uh barry mangold is going to is playing this straight i've yeah i see some things that are there's a lot of people have said to me hey we're watching some folks in the media it's a rush to judgment okay but people are entitled to their opinion of the coverage but the there's an incomplete story right now it is fascinating to watch as this information starts to leak out here and there in little little uh drips and dabs it's going to be days where nothing's coming out and then there'll be days when stuff comes out it's kind of irrelevant but the fact is is that some parties haven't been heard from yet it'll be interesting and i was particularly interested in representing martinez answer what if you have disgruntled folks that are doing um whistleblowing sorts of things i will i'll just tell you this personally to his benefit and all the others there's never been a department all the years and you know people that do what i do um real journalist i'm a talk show host right and so we see this all the time but i still get the same sort of phone calls and the phone calls that have been from disgruntled people upset from a state agency no agency ever has do i get more phone calls from than i do from tourism over the years more than anybody getting people saying you really ought to look into this and that's been going on before this administration okay so um for people that are that's an agency that a lot of people have been upset for a long time so that means that they may have stories to tell that are legit it will be interesting to see i do like that i can tell that ryan martinez charles mccall moved on this really quickly a lot of things happened really quickly i'm going to assume the information that they received probably from whistleblowers and probably legitimate enough obviously to start these committees but loft has done a lot of a lot of reports right and the interesting thing is whenever loft does a report and loft was created frankly because there was not anybody out there doing the kind of work that they want to do the legislature began to tire of that doesn't take long to read between the lines on that particular statement but the fact was they created that to start looking at government accountability they didn't think enough that was going on and it's 100 percent of the time any agency that's looked at they find a problem with you could probably go into any to any business and if people do an audit of themselves you'll find some things you can approve and when it's when it's really big it obviously gets the headlines so loft is always wrong by the way depending on your if you're talking about when they make a report about an agency the agencies always responded 100 of the time they don't know what they did and i think mike jackson those folks do know what they're doing they're not infallible but they have done some incredible work over these i haven't seen anything that resulted in something like this since loft was was created but they've done some big ticket items from a behavioral health standpoint as we go in to this session where are there things that you're still looking at hopefully are going to happen between now and the end of the session you know there's a lot of different things that are are kind of out there the um i mean nothing that that is i think jumps up and and just screams headlines uh on everything but i do believe that the the attention of behavioral health has been uh incredible certainly with what we're talking about with first responders continuing that you know that's something we started responding uh in in doing different things to reach out in that first responder community actually just prior to covid we had already started a program and with covet certainly reaching out more i think those are very important issues any of the bills with the schools and uh in giving more attention to behavioral health issues in schools uh even i think was it last week the bill with what's gonna have 988 on the student id cards and uh that comes up next year it seems like a really little thing but it's a great thing uh to have this information in front of kids in front of uh the families so uh all of this i mean i've just i've been encouraged with the the direction we're moving uh still it's there's so much more that we have to do so continued investment in these areas finding things at work investing in those those evidence-based services the type of type of services and initiatives that give you that that return on the investment and betters the state moving forward i'm very encouraged about that a couple of final topics uh explain to us what we need to be taking away from the very high profile death of naomi judd it captured people's attention the other day the daughters put out a statement saying we lost our mother to mental illness your thoughts about what this means what we can understand you know it i think number one it tells you that the these are diseases of the brain and the diseases don't discriminate the so this is an individual who has talked about her battles with depression uh over the years she's had conversations about that before so she's extremely successful and there are a lot of other things uh going on in her life that many people would look back and think that there couldn't be anything else anything wrong you know it's the perfect picture of a life yet she turned she is experiencing profound depression um to the point and that it resulted in her death these are diseases when and i'm not going to say they were left untreated because i don't know her treatment history i don't think we i had not seen a lot about that but these are diseases that we need to keep an eye on can and sometimes continually work there are chronic diseases that take continued attention uh to ensure that others are okay and it's also a a message to families about helping to reach out and um and check on loved ones and being involved in loved ones and and certainly uh the the other thing that really comes comes from this is is that access to care uh issue i see uh julie had put something on us online talking about access access is a uh a conversation that we need to have we have some conversations coming up on that on our wednesday nights uh where we're going to be talking about the different issues and the barrier to care but access to care is important and in many cases even people with resources don't necessarily have access to those services so it's something that we have to continue fighting for and moving forward within certainly within the behavioral health community but families speaking up uh and trying to ensure that all people have access to the needed services so that they can be well it's also a shift in our understanding about these diseases we need to be working towards wellness we need to be working towards recovery and helping people get those services so that they can live the life that that they're supposed to live all right so we should say for the folks who see our wednesday program this week we're probably going to be doing legislative and we may be doing legislative streams every day this week depending on tech challenges we may be fasting having this week but we have a couple of things that we will be premiering on healthwatch oklahoma you want to kind of preview some of those i think at least two episodes coming up two episodes coming up so one episode we have worked with actually an attorney local attorney uh talking about parity issues and parody is the uh law that says that insurance companies need to be covering behavioral health issues the same as they would any other illness and despite that being law that doesn't occur and we have talked to virginia holman again a local attorney and local attorney actually specializes in insurance and she has has graciously talked about her experiences and the experiences of her family and her fight to ensure that insurance companies her health insurance company covered her care and it was a tremendous fight on her part she did not give up and now she is working to help other families navigate these same same challenges we're also going to be talking to uh terry white and former commissioner in the department of mental health and substance abuse services talking about her new job as the head of the mental health association of oklahoma and we're going to talk a little bit about that transition the transition from uh director of estate agency or commissioner of a state agency to uh moving into the ag advocacy field and i wanted to find out some more of her thoughts on what the opportunities are here in the state things that we can do and things that she might not now see from a different lens it'll be fascinating i mean she's been around since the time where that you really didn't get to talk about things like this to a receptive audience right exactly and then she's a big part of the change we'll probably talk about that also the shift that we've seen over the last 15 years or so and and really when i talked about the legislature having a better understanding of these behavioral health issues a lot of that was terry walking the halls and uh garnering support so make sure you follow mitchell talks and then also on twitter at mitchell talks you follow there well we start to do these streams as they come along as we said leading up to this week that this is kind of the witching hour and my expectation is we're going to see a lot of activity this week i would just assume that come friday they're going to go home for a week and be back probably on the friday they have to be done friday the 27th i believe it's the date and but sometimes the governor disagrees with what the legislature has done and he'll issue a veto and then they they save the day to come back and deliberate on whether to try to override that veto or maybe even the budget we'll see it can get contentious it can smooth out a lot of people want to get back to campaigning or get to campaigning which also leads us to this i mean there's been so much distraction recently we have not spent a lot of time on jail we'll kick that up in the next few days because that election the entire primary election is just around the corner and we want to get back on the issues there the real issues that are facing voters and what you need to know to either cast a yay or an a on that jail bond issue well jeff thanks for joining us tonight thanks for spending time with us thanks for having me i appreciate it and be watching for those uh jeff dismukes health watch oklahoma specials be coming real soon we'll get those to you as soon as we can all right this is scott mitchell thanks for all the folks that we had a great audience tonight really appreciate the folks that take time out to watch these streams if you have a question that you don't want to do publicly send me email scott mitchelltalks.com and we'll see if we can cover a talk for you in the meantime have a great monday night everyone we'll see you soon maybe even tomorrow

2022-05-27 12:37

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