A new plotline has developed in the twisted reality drama “Oklahoma – America’s Shithole.”
Earlier this week, Terry Cline, the doofus pictured above, resigned as Commissioner of the Oklahoma Health Department following reports the agency mysteriously lost $10-million and will now have to layoff and furlough employees, affecting health services to thousands of Oklahomans.
Via Oklahoma Watch:
The top official and a senior deputy at the Oklahoma State Department of Health have resigned amid findings that the agency overspent and mismanaged finances for years.
In an emergency meeting Monday night, the Oklahoma State Board of Health accepted the resignations of Health Commissioner Terry Cline and Senior Deputy Commissioner Julie Cox-Kain, effective immediately. The department is grappling with an unexplained $10 million cash crunch, recently implementing furloughs and program cuts and announcing layoffs.
Cline was replaced on an interim basis by Preston Doerflinger, Oklahoma’s finance secretary.
That’s great. We’re replacing the guy who lost $10-million in the health department budget with the speed demon Mary Fallin put in charge of the Oklahoma budget. To make this even better, Doerflinger is being replaced at OMES by Mary Fallin’s former Chief of Staff Denise Northrup. I guess Oklahoma is the place where the Peter Principle goes to die.
Here is Terry Cline’s “pretend everything is fine” resignation letter:
That’s hysterical. He really wrote that OSDH “will continue to build on the significant improvements we have seen in the health of our state?” Is he moving to Chicago to write for The Onion? Since 2007, Oklahoma has jumped from 49th to 46th in the United Health Foundation’s America’s Health Rankings report. Unless it has to do with college football, leapfrogging Alabama is not considered “significant improvement.”
Anyway, nobody really knows how or why the agency lost $10-million. Here’s what State Auditor Gary Jones had to say:
“We’ve heard a lot of figures bantered around. I think that probably what we’re looking at right now is probably a number higher than that,” Jones said.
Jones said they will go through the accounting system; determine what money went where, if it was used improperly and who made the decisions.
He said they won’t know exactly what they’re dealing with until the audit is complete.
“It could be them in turn trying to balance their books by moving money from one account to another thinking that they can have the ability to pay it back at another time. It could be that there was fraud committed and somebody in turn took money and put it in their pockets,” Jones said.
Jones said the resignations come at unusual time in the audit.
“Usually, we see resignations at the end of an audit, not the beginning of an audit,” he said. “Once we start issuing our reports and once the information starts coming out, that’s when we generally see the resignations or the indictments.”
Can we get some offshore gambling website to come up with odds on how they lost the money? Knowing what I know about Oklahoma government and the idiots who lead it, I’d say the odds are even between incompetence and corruption.
Should also add, Scott Pruitt received notifications by employees of possible criminal activity prior to leaving for Washington and turned the complaints over to………..wait for it…………..Terry Cline and THE DEPARTMENT of HEALTH to investigate! Cool, kinda like Dear Mr. Madoff been reports to us here at the SEC about some investment violations, here’s the complaint, can you look into it and get back to us if you’re guilty or not. The FBI has also received notification of suspected wrongdoing.
I’m sure I’m begging for something not likely to happen, but if it could just result in some major issues for the number of people who were warned, provided prior information and chose to ignore.
Will be interesting to see the political knife fights over who to blame and throw under the bus for what appears to be an epic dumpster fire and perfect shit storm of a debacle!
But, but Bedlam is coming. Quick, don’t look behind the curtain and certainly don’t pick door number 3.
Here’s what the Oklahoman said of Denise Northup:
Denise Northrup, chief of staff
Abrasive, sarcastic and profane, Denise Northrup is perhaps the prototypical chief of staff — a tough and loyal guardian of her boss’ time and reputation.
Add the Change.org petition charges:
Recently, Preston Doerflinger the Oklahoma Secretary for Finance and Revenue has come under fire for his handling of the state budget and for divisive statements he has made against other officials and citizens. His ongoing verbal insults against public officials and others are beneath the office he holds. We are calling on Governor Fallin to remove Doerflinger from his current position.
Then when you add that the State Auditor is puzzled as to why the head of an agency resigns prior to an audit, well you have the perfect storm. I guess this is one of the audits of state agencies political candidates have been requesting.
Are these really the personalities that should be running state agencies? I thought the Pit Bull personality types gravitated toward private business, and people who wanted to help society gravitated to jobs in public service. Nope this is Oklahoma, or the bizarro world created by Mary Fallin and her political machine.
It would be nice if this could be investigated by the national media so we can find out if this is incompetence or corruption, as other than this website our local media doesn’t like to do anything controversial that hasn’t been cleared by the Chamber of Commerce. Hopefully Gubernatorial candidate Gary Jones will get this report out prior to the election next year.
Must be why we keep making all these wonderful top 10 lists?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5036937/Do-live-one-sexually-diseased-states.html
Further proof that we need to educate our children with science based sex ed, and not an iron age book of fear mongering. Oklahoma Children these days: “Can I get pregnant from anal?” <- This is not an exaggeration.
Not that shocking.
Isn’t this the same agency that had ghost employees & where has all that federal money for bioterrorism gone at the osdh?? Accountability??
Lots of Fox in the hen house – while the head hen, Fallin, moves the fox around to different agencies. My home state is an embarrassment!
And while I’m bitchin’ here, WHY were the FEDS kept from inspecting the Okc jail? WHO made that decision?
It’s sad and embarrassing.
I see from the resignation letter that Fallin has given yet another former Chesapeake exec something to do in state government.
I was at OSDH for almost 20 years and left earlier this year after I could no longer keep up with the bills. The first action I remember doofus taking was grinching Christmas and preventing OSDH from putting up Christmas trees. Fine, whatever, piss on the holiday because you can. It went downhill from there. Former employee appreciation days also went out the window, he created a new position and hired his flunky Julie Cox-Kain into it to act as his proxy commissioner of health, stopped going to his own leadership meetings, and eventually so did JCK. The only times you saw Cline were in the snackbar or showing up for photo-ops when someone won an award. He used OSDH to push his agenda with the national Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) to advance his political aspirations. In the last two years, he also pushed to have each floor at OSDH turned into a cubicle farm, assuring everyone at OSDH had the funds until the top two floors had been relocated to their “temporary” prison. Several areas were moved to “the hole” (a mostly unventilated, moldy portion of the building that had only been used as overflow storage for files and surplus). Only after they had been relocated did senior “leadership” announce that the project was on hold and the top two floors of the building remained unoccupied when I left (except for hundreds of computers and monitors thrown callously into giant disposal bins instead of being sold at surplus, but that’s another story…). The worst part? Doesn’t anyone remember deputy commissioner Brent Vanmeter and the scandal at OSDH in 2000? He didn’t get away with it, why did anyone else think they could? Where is the oversight of the board of health and the checks and balances? It took years for the agency to get back on track and over a decade before the fear l left most of the staff. Most. That was mostly just Long Term Care, now it’s the entire agency; how long will it take this time? How many staff and years of knowledge and experience will now be fed up and escape the madhouse and loss of pay as I did? Am I pissed? You bet! Ultimately it’s the majority of dedicated OSDH staff and the people of Oklahoma that will pay the price. Vanmeter got a slap on the wrist and a couple years in prison. Anyone involved in this outrage needs to be made an example of. Otherwise, some other dumbass will try it again in another 17 years.
Fleshia Scanlan was the most crooked of them all. OSDH was warned about her back in 2011 or 2012 and they took no action. I was shocked when they promoted her in 2012 to her current, and now fired, position.
And I too am a former employee for 9 years
These are the kinds of stories that have me almost convinced that there is some uber-sinister plot to give these criminals these positions, so they can intentionally sabotage these relevant and necessary agencies. Then swoops in the GOP and their ilk to say “See?! This is why we need to privatize everything! Business “leaders” can FIX all of this mess. For-profit levels the playing field and keeps people honest!” Now, if we can just get the sheeple educated…
What’s the over/under on corruptions vs incompetence?
The over/under is a net push. This is equal parts incompetence and corruption. Wow, this story gets worse and worse.
Not to mention the two people below him and the lawyer got canned as well. This stinks of corruption. Those people are losing their job because the greed of a few. Sad.
And now 250 people who had absolutely nothing to do with this corruption or mismanagement are going to lose their jobs after years of service for shitty state pay.
That crap at OSDH has been going for years, so what’s new. Same stuff just different years and different people and some old ones hanging in there. Glad I got out of there when I did.
Dr. Cline is a decent man and had high morals. Not too sure about his 2nd in Command but the 3rd party to be let go was crooked as hell and should be investigated by OSBI not the Health Board. Criminal charges should be filed against her this shifting of funds goes back to @ least 2010 when I observed it.