When Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, House Speaker Kyle Hilbert and Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton came together, with only hours of public notice, to push through yet another government-backed corporate incentive program—this time, the aluminum smelter giveaway to an entity from the United Arab Emirates—they appeared to have everything lined up.
What they didn’t account for were 200 residents of a small Oklahoma town.
Those residents were willing to put their names on the line, stand in the way, and force a public reckoning over a deal that, absent their intervention, was being put on the fast track.
If you are a regular reader of these editorials, you are by now familiar with the specifics of the $250 million taxpayer-funded giveaway, filed by House appropriations officials Trey Caldwell and John Kane and Senate appropriations officials Chuck Hall and John Haste on a late-May weekend, as the 2025 legislative session came to a close.
The taxpayers who would foot the bill and the Inola residents who would be directly affected by the project were attending graduations, spending a Saturday with family, running weekend errands, mowing the yard, attending kids’ activities, or watching out for that weekend’s severe weather. They were not refreshing the Legislature’s bill-tracking system.
By that Tuesday at 3:11 in the afternoon, Hilbert’s Rules Committee chairman, Mike Osburn, had brought the bill to the floor.
Osburn is the House apparatchik who has since become notorious for conducting the Soviet-style secret show trial of Danny Williams—a proceeding in which Williams has already been convicted, even though the charges against him have yet to be made public.
By 3:26 that afternoon, Osburn was done with his dirty work on the giveaway, making a mockery of the House of Representatives’ role as the people’s House, where the people should have at least the scantest chance to have their voices heard.
Now, as the 2027 session approaches, there’s every reason to believe that state Rep. Tom Gann will once again propose the Gann Plan, the effort to reform House rules to prevent these never-ending abuses. And there’s just as much reason to believe that the powerful House speaker isn’t inclined to give up his power to quickly approve corporate welfare giveaways before the people can have their voices heard.
But that aside, there’s still a check on that power that’s threatening to bring down the entire house of cards.
Notwithstanding the machinations of a system designed to bypass public transparency and foist upon the people the policies they do not support, there’s still the power of local government.
It’s a power the people of Inola have availed themselves of, with just over 200 signing a petition to call a local election to prevent smelting operations within their city limits. The city’s jurisdiction is a crucial part of the government giveaway through a local tax increment financing program—one of the favorite tools of those who perpetuate this form of corporate welfare.
And now, under the threat of that action, their city council has started to represent their concerns, placing a moratorium on smelting activity.
It’s a sensational example of how grassroots action can still make a difference, even when so much of government has been taken out of the people’s control.
But the ability of city councils to hear the voices of those they represent would take yet another hit if one of the scariest proposals you have never heard of were to advance.
That bill was filed in the last legislative session as Senate Bill 647 by Avery Frix in the Senate and Preston Stinson in the House, and it’s likely to return in the 2027 session.
The special interest motivating it appears to be the homebuilding industry, represented by lobbyist Ryan Martinez, a former legislator and high-ranking lieutenant of then-House Speaker Charles McCall.
The bill would shift discretion over local land-use decisions away from locally elected officials by restricting what they could consider when voting on zoning applications. Although residents would still be allowed to speak at public hearings, the Frix-Stinson bill provides that a city cannot base its decision solely on the presence, number or intensity of public opposition unless that opposition is accompanied by what the bill terms “objective and relevant facts.”
In practical terms, a packed council chamber full of residents opposed to a development would not, by itself, be enough for their elected officials to reject it. The proposal would therefore place a state-imposed limit on how much weight local officials could give to the expressed wishes of the people they represent when making local zoning decisions.
If this bill were in place, how far-reaching would its effects be?
Would it allow Inola city councilors to simply point to state law and say, “There’s nothing we can do. Call your legislators,” knowing full well that the Legislature is rigged against them?
What about those Broken Arrow residents who weren’t open to the idea of a mosque potentially setting up shop next door?
And, of course, there are the Edmond residents—those who appear to be the prime targets of the bill—who are reluctant to see entire new apartment complexes pouring massive amounts of new traffic onto an already overloaded street grid.
The developers, under the banner of a woke housing justice argument, make bank when they build massive new developments. This bill would keep them in that business, even though they will be long gone while the citizens—those who will still live and work in the affected area—will be left to experience the consequences.
It’s an ever-growing problem. More and more, power is being taken away from the local level and placed where it is inaccessible to the people.
And I have seen it occur through the years. Too many local officials love to embrace what I have termed “learned helplessness,” even when their inabilities are simply perceived inabilities. This bill would hand them a powerful tool to dodge responsibility.
They hate being caught in controversy, and they really enjoy passing the buck to higher levels of government.
“Call your congressman” or “Call your legislator” is their deflection. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”
They do not want to be the next Inola City Council, facing the overwhelming pressure of political and corporate interests on one side and their constituents on the other.
But perhaps they should be careful what they wish for. If legislation such as Senate Bill 647 were to pass, one could make the point—with tongue only slightly in cheek—that perhaps taxpayers should save the expense of paying local officials to occupy pointless positions and simply employ the services of an AI to carry out the formula promulgated from a big building far, far away.
This is one of the very real problems that I look forward to demonstrating firsthand as part of the upcoming citizen training sessions: showing real-life examples of fearful local officials claiming helplessness, to the frustration of local residents. But we won’t be taking those local officials at their word. Rather, we will explain what their abilities really are and also why they might prefer to just stay in their own helpless reality.
Stay tuned.
That bill designed to limit and ignore residents not in agreement with a proposed project was at the behest of the mayors league and Chamber of commerce per a city council member in Creek County.