Fallin Gov

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/sen-inhofe-is-just-fine-with-flooding-his-neighbors-as-long-as-it-keeps-his-lake-view/

no lnx

Sen. Inhofe is just fine with flooding his neighbors as long as it keeps his lake view

Written by Sarah Okeson /DC Report November 27, 2019

Sen Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, tucked an amendment into the $750 billion defense spending bill that would benefit fellow wealthy homeowners at Grand Lake in northeast Oklahoma by keeping lake levels high but is expected to worsen flooding in nearby Miami, Okla.

The amendment, which starts on page 1,183 of the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, would limit the ability of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to say how high the lake should be. The Grand River Dam Authority, which has board members who also own lake houses, is licensed by the commission to operate the dam.

“He’s helping his buddies to make sure the lake is full during summer so those very big boats do well,” said Rebecca Jim of Local Environmental Action Demanded which put up a billboard in Miami criticizing Inhofe.

Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees was created in 1940, when the federal government’s New Deal-era Public Works Administration built the Pensacola Dam on the Grand River. The 66-mile-long lake is so beloved by the wealthy and powerful of Oklahoma that one of its subdivisions is called Governors Retreat. Inhofe, a climate-change denier and vocal anti-environmentalist with an estimated net worth is $4.5 million, built a vacation house at Grand Lake in 1962. Former Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and her husband bought a second home on Grand Lake in 2011. Dam authority board members Pete Churchwell, Jim Richie and Tom Kimball also have lake houses.

“For the better part of my career in the United States Senate I have been working to maintain higher lake levels on Grand,” Inhofe wrote the commission in 2016.

Law professor Richard Painter said the annual defense bill has been used before to try to get environmentally questionable projects through Congress. In 2018, the Senate defense bill included an amendment that would nullify lawsuits over a land exchange for PolyMet Mining Co. to build a copper-nickel mine in Minnesota. That provision was removed before the bill went to the president.

“That’s something that should not be dealt with in a defense appropriations bill,” said Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.

The federal financial conflict of interest law exempts members of Congress, the president and the vice president. Miami officials learned about Inhofe’s amendment just before the July 4 holiday from the press.

“It’s just as unfair as it can be,” said Miami City Manager Dean Kruithof.

Since the early 1990s, Miami has flooded more than two dozen times, most recently in May. A 2015 study Miami paid for found that the dam worsened flooding.

“The economic and social fabric of the community is slowly being destroyed,” said Miami Mayor Rudy Schultz.

Natasha McKibben spent her oldest son’s eighth birthday packing up their house near Miami, shortly before it flooded in 2007, causing $30 million to $40 million in damage to Miami and the surrounding area. Some of her neighbors’ houses are still vacant.

“We had a FEMA trailer for probably two months before we could get back in the house,” McKibben said.

Miami officials had hoped to address flooding problems with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The license for the dam runs through March 2022. The dam authority now wants to extend the license until Dec. 31, 2026.

Brownback Syndrome? school 4 day week?

...Edmondson, by contrast, is the Democrats' dream candidate — a Vietnam veteran who has already won statewide office multiple times and has decent name recognition. One poll released in July showed Edmondson leading the race by one point with Stitt as the nominee.

Oklahoma is one of the reddest states in America. It is one of only two stateswhere President Donald Trump carried every single county. But Democrats have held the governor's mansion as recently as 2011.

Republicans in Oklahoma are also reeling from voter resentment amid the massive unpopularity of retiring Gov. Mary Fallin, who oversaw reckless tax cuts that collapsed the state's finances and crippled state agencies. The teacher strikes only scratch the surface — under Fallin's tenure, rural hospitals have shuttered, waiting lists for community help for the elderly and disabled have stretched to 10 years, and there is even a driving limit on state troopers to ration fuel.

In an ominous sign for Republicans, Tuesday night's runoffs also saw the defeat of half a dozen GOP state lawmakers who voted against the tax increase to fund teacher pay — which cannot inspire confidence for a gubernatorial nominee who claimed he would not have signed it.

The upshot is that Democrats now have a real chance to win in a heavily red state, and punch deep into Trump territory. They should heed the anger of voters hurt by GOP misrule, and fight for them.

Oklahoma’s Anti-Protest Law

On May 9, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed a bill into law that increases fines for civil disobedience, and seeks to punish “conspirator” organizations. The ordinance, HB 2128, targets protests that disrupt “critical infrastructure” with felony charges and a minimum of $10,000 fine. There are further fines of up to $100,000 and up to ten years in jail for those found damaging facilities. Organizations that “compensate” such protests could face up to $1 million in fines.

Public Radio Tulsa reported part of the debate in the Oklahoma House:

Rep. Mark McBride faced a barrage of questions from Democrats, including Rep. Cory Williams, who asked what constitutes “compensation” under HB2128.

“It means just what we want it to on this bill. How about that?” McBride said.

“I’m sorry, what?” Williams said. “Is it a check? Is it money? Is it staying at somebody’s house? Is it some other benefit conferred?”

“That would be for the courts to decide,” McBride said.

“All due respect, we’re supposed to be writing laws. They interpret them. Our laws should have definitions in them,” Williams said.

Rep. Collin Walke bristled at a provision saying an arrest — not necessarily a conviction — is enough to create that liability.

“And if that doesn’t cause you concern as a small-government conservative, that we are punishing legal activity, then I question your status as a small-government conservative,” Walke said.

Curbs Nationwide

outside mag 12/16

https://www.outsideonline.com/2140846/mary-fallin-pro-oil-they-come

Gov Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, a vice-chair of the Trump transition team whose aggressive pro-oil and anti-tax policies have made her an industry darling, has emerged as a top contender to be our country's next Secretary of the Interior. If she is formally nominated in the coming days, Fallin could soon lead a federal department responsible for protecting endangered species, handling Native American affairs, controlling the U.S. Geological Survey, administering lucrative oil and gas leasing programs, and managing more than 440 million acres of public land, including the National Park system.

Should Fallin take the reins at Interior, she will have broad power to reshape policies that will impact the future of the United States' most beloved landscapes. Her priorities will undoubtedly be very different than those of current Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who has used her time in the post to promote the outdoor recreation economy, offset energy development with large-scale land conservation projects, and preserve new national monuments. Jewell has also sought to mitigate carbon pollution by placing a moratorium on new public lands coal leases. Fallin, it’s safe to say, will see things differently.

Johnson Bridgwater, the director of the Sierra Club's Oklahoma chapter, calls Fallin's potential nomination "problematic."

"She has basically been an absentee governor on all important environmental issues in our state during her term," he says, specifically highlighting her slow response to the oil-industry-induced earthquakes that have rocked the state as well as her decision to dissolve the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission. Fallin, he adds, has starved the state's environmental enforcement agencies of funding while at the same time prioritizing the desires of fossil fuel developers.

Oklahoma's oil and gas interests, for their part, laud the governor's legacy. Fallin has "balanced competing interests well, including oil and gas producers, environmental concerns, royalty owners and surface rights," says Chad Warmington, president of the Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association, in a written statement to Outside. "She understands the importance of keeping the United States a number one global competitor in oil and natural gas.”

Fallin began her Beltway career as a Congresswoman for Oklahoma's fifth district, which includes the state capital and surrounding suburbs. During two terms on Capitol Hill, from 2007 to 2010, she received nearly $350,000 in oil and gas campaign contributions, making the industry her top supporter. It’s no wonder: in Congress, Fallin repeatedly sponsored billsto boost fossil fuel development on federal land and pushed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

Upon ascending to Oklahoma's governorship in 2011, Fallin further cemented her reputation as an industry ally. While implementing tax breaks and relaxing regulations, she presided over a historic fracking boom that created immense private wealth and triggered a string of dangerous earthquakes across the state. Last year, she signed a bill into law that barred cities, towns, and counties from banning fracking, a tactic that has gained popularity among localities across the country that oppose the controversial drilling technique. She has also helped lead the legal fight against the Obama Administration's Clean Power Plan, which seeks to reduce carbon emissions from power plants.

Her personal ties are pertinent, too. One of Fallin's closest allies and advisors is J. Larry Nichols, former chairman of the American Petroleum Institute and co-founder of the pioneering fracking firm Devon Energy, the multi-billion-dollar petroleum producer operating on public lands across the West. She's also cozy with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit organization closely tied to the donor network of Charles and David Koch that promotes far-right policies at the state level. In the early nineties, ALEC deemed Fallon a "legislator of the year.”

For Fallin and her allies, fossil fuel development even inspires religious fervor. In October, amid sagging global oil prices, the governor established an "oilfield prayer day" in Oklahoma to “thank God for the blessings created by the oil and natural gas industry and to seek His wisdom and ask for protection.” As the nationwide oil bust continues to rock extraction-dependent states like Oklahoma, Fallin's government has preserved generous industry tax cuts while slashing school funding.

When asked by local reporters about her qualifications for the top job at Interior, Fallin highlighted her time on the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department's governing board as well as her relationship with the state's 39 Native American nations. On December 1, members of the Cherokee and Chickasaw governments voiced support for Fallin. (The Trump transition team did not respond to several requests for comment.)

Fallin's department of interior candidacy has caused dismay among national conservation organizations. "Oklahoma has very little public land, and outdoor recreation there consists primarily of hunting leases on private land and boating on reservoirs," says Erik Molvar, the director of the Western Watersheds Project, a wildlife and public lands advocacy organization headquartered in Hailey, Idaho. "It is not a great place to learn how to responsibly manage millions of acres of federal land in the West."

Alan Rowsome, a senior director at the Wilderness Society, says Fallin's past suggests she doesn't share "the mainstream conservation values" that the majority of Americans hold. "Across the political spectrum, Americans cherish their shared public lands and want to see them protected," he says. "And I think turning the keys to these lands over to a staunch oil and gas industry ally is not what most Americans want."

National fossil fuel groups, meanwhile, seem pleased with the possible appointment. "She certainly understands our industry and understands the role of the Department of the Interior," says Dan Naatz, a senior vice president at the Independent Petroleum Association of America. His group would like more oil and gas development on federal lands, which Naatz says is part of the Interior Department's "multiple use mandate."

A lot is going to depend on who the Secretary is, Naatz adds. "It's an exciting time."

Filed To: Politics, Public Lands, Oklahoma, Secretary of the Interior

Gov. Mary Fallin on Monday signed Senate Bill 1456, a measure that would allow regulated electric utilities to charge customers who generate electricity from rooftop solar panels or small wind turbines.

The bill allows utilities to create a new customer class, The Oklahoman‘s Paul Monies reports:

SB 1456 would allow electric utilities to apply to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to establish a higher base customer charge for users of rooftop solar or small wind turbines. The higher fixed charge would be used to recover some of the infrastructure costs to safely send excess electricity back to the grid.

Gov. Fallin also issued an executive order to accompany her bill signing, which is unusual. In the order, Fallin “emphasized the importance of renewable energy in her Oklahoma First Energy Plan,” Monies reports.

The bill attracted a unique cross-section of opposition from environmental organizations, wind and solar advocates, and conservative groups. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Monday criticized the bill, calling it a “sun tax” installed to protect the “bottom line of oil and gas and coal industries.” Skip to 6:30 to hear Maddow’s commentary on the bill.

Oklahoma’s two major electric utilities, Oklahoma Gas and Electric and Public Service Co. of Oklahoma, supported the bill. The utilities say they need to charge customers who generate power with rooftop solar panels and small wind turbines because they’re using an existing electric infrastructure without paying for it.

Nationally, the electric utility industry is worried that distributed power generation posesa major threat to its business model.

StateImpact Oklahoma is a partnership among Oklahoma’s public radio stations and relies on contributions from readers and listeners to fulfill its mission of public service to Oklahoma and beyond. Donate online.

watchdogorg916

Grayson Quay | Watchdog Arena

Several states have voiced their opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency’s sweeping Clean Power Plan, but none has been so resolute in its defiance as Oklahoma, which has continually challenged the plan through executive and judicial means.

The Clean Power Plan, which is the first nationwide regulation of existing power plants, has not taken effect yet, but it has already inspired vastly different responses from various states.

The plan sets goals for each state and then leaves it to the state to devise a plan, which must be approved by the EPA, to achieve those goals. If a state refuses to devise a State Implementation Plan, the federal government will impose one.

“One state may opt to phase out older coal-burning power plants, while another might seek to expand the use of solar and wind energy. Or a state might add new energy-efficiency programs to cut electricity consumption,” a recent Washington Post article suggested.

The plan, which will likely be finalized within a few weeks, seeks a 30 percent reduction in national carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by 2030, but could hit Oklahoma even harder. Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general, has predicted the plan could force Oklahoma to cut emissions by 33 percent by 2020 and 36 percent by 2030.

Many Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell chief among them, have expressed skepticism about the EPA’s promise of relative independence for the states.

“(I)t’s difficult to conceive how a plan imposed from Washington would be much different from what a state might develop on its own. Since the Obama administration has already decreed that it will be the judge of whether a plan is acceptable or not, it’s hard to see the White House agreeing to much that diverges from its ideological agenda,” McConnell wrote in March. In the same op-ed, McConnell encouraged governors to refuse to set up implementation plans.

Earlier this month, the U.S. News & World Report reported that six governors had taken up McConnell’s banner. But while Mike Pence of Indiana, Greg Abbott of Texas, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Earl Ray Tomblin of West Virginia and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana have all threatened noncompliance, none have done so as emphatically as Mary Fallin of Oklahoma.

Gov. Fallin signed an executive order in April in which she accuses the EPA of seeking to “go beyond” regulating power plant emissions to “regulate all aspects of state energy systems.”

Oklahoma has shown its willingness to develop clean energy, with over12 percent of the state’s electricity generated by wind power, but the administration fears excessive federal control over the state’s energy economy.

Citing the difficulty and expense of setting up an implementation plan, Fallin’s order serves to “prohibit the (Oklahoma) Department of Energy Quality from beginning efforts to develop a SIP… in response to the finalization of the Clean Power Plan rules” unless she orders them to do so.

On May 1, Fallin vetoed a bill that would have required the state to develop an implementation plan subject to approval by the state’s attorney general.

The executive order also claims that the plan contains “numerous possible legal defects, each of which may provide an independent basis to invalidate the Clean Power Plan in its entirety.”

McConnell concurred in his op-ed, writing that the plan is “probably illegal.”

Attorney General Pruitt has been at the forefront of the legal battle against the Clean Power Plan, although so far the fight is not going well. After six different legal challenges to the plan by a variety of states and private-sector energy companies were tossed out of court, the Natural Resources Defense Council declared “polluters and their allies are now batting 0 for 6.”

The cases were dismissed either due to a lack of jurisdiction, or because the courts only have the power to review actual federal regulations, not proposals. In a recently dismissed lawsuit brought by 14 states, including Oklahoma, the states argued the proposed plan was already negatively affecting them, The Hill reported. The states recently appealed for a rehearing.

“Waiting until the rule is finalized before a court can rule on its lawfulness will force states like Oklahoma into making policy decisions on power generation and distribution that will be irreversible,” Pruitt said, explaining that to ensure compliance, the state would have to begin efforts to reduce emissions before the plan is finalized.

Pruitt also filed a separate lawsuit of his own in Tulsa last week, which was thrown out for lack of jurisdiction, and has since tried to appeal his case to a federal appeals court in Denver.

Last year, the New York Times reported on a “secretive alliance” between Pruitt and large energy companies, showing that Pruitt routinely signed his name to letters from energy lobbyists and passed them on to policymakers with minimal revision. Pruitt’s office responded that he was merely consulting experts to better understand the effects of federal regulation. “It is the content of the request not the source of the request that is relevant,” the statement read.

In addition to questioning its legality, many opponents of the Clean Power Plan also fear its economic consequences. “While the environmental benefits of these regulations will be minimal, the economic devastation of these overreaching and unrealistic regulations will be very real,” Fallin said.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association has predicted that the plan could cause a 10 percent jump in electricity prices, which could drain $2.8 trillion from the national GDP from 2020 to 2040 and kill 2.1 million jobs in 2021 alone.

Proponents of the plan argue that the nation cannot afford not to implement it. The EPA has claimed the plan will produce $7 in health benefits for every dollar it costs, while the Economist recently warned of the potentially disastrous economic consequences of climate change.

This article was written by a contributor of Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center’s network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.

fang mach ch 5

scam phantom district on stimulus zip code error; but drudge, politico then ABC 208 (then weeks on Fox)

Rep Mary fallin denounced; // fnk ctr w/ McCain and Coburn did report, but either not stim, or mischaracterized eg WNBA facility was tribal community ctr w/ no for-profit anything 208.

3. Oklahoma Bans Increases in the Minimum Wage

While the Obama administration raises the minimum wage threshold for private contractors working with the government, Democrats in Congress push for a $10.10 minimum wage, and Seattle votes in the country’s highest minimum at $15.00 an hour, Oklahoma is going in the exact opposite direction: not only is Oklahoma not considering a statewide increase, but it banned individual cities [6] from even considering such a raise on their own.

The move was widely viewed as a preemptive attack on a movement by the Central Oklahoma Labor Federation to raise the Oklahoma City’s wage to $10.10, in line with that being called for by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin and her fellow Republicans in the legislature argued [7] the bill created a “level playing field for all municipalities in Oklahoma” and protected against “artificial” raises in the minimum wage, whatever those are.

"Mandating an increase in the minimum wage would…would create a hardship for small business owners, stifle job creation and increase costs for consumers," Fallin said. "And it would do all of these things without even addressing the goal of reducing poverty."

Not quite. The statistics on the relation of minimum wage to job creation or loss are murky, but most studies find raising the wage’s overall affect on employment to be negligible. Two things raising the minimum wage definitely does: increases earnings for lower-income workers (by $33 billion in the case of a nationwide raise to $10.10) and lifts almost one million people out of poverty. Neither is something metropolises in Oklahoma are going to find out about any time soon.

4. Oklahoma Punishes Solar and Wind Power Producers

Oklahoma wasn’t done. Unhappy with people who install their own solar panels or wind turbines, an action that helps the utilities by easing the pressure on the companies during peak hours, the state is now penalizing private energy producers through a surcharge [8].

The extra charge applies to those who sell excess energy generated by the panels or turbines back to the grid, known as net metering. It was snuck in as a rider on another bill at the last minute, catching lawmakers and alternative energy groups off guard. It passed without a single dissenting vote.

It didn’t take long for Oklahoman owners of small businesses to point out the absurdity of a law that punishes in-state producers of energy.

“Oklahoma offers tax credits for large wind turbines which are built elsewhere, but wants to penalize small wind which we manufacture here in the state?” Mike Bergey, president & CEO of Bergey Windpower said [8]. “That makes no sense to me.”

Who would support such a bill? The ultra-conservative advocacy group ALEC, which has framed people with solar panels as “freeriders on the system,” though they actually contribute to the city’s power resources. ALEC is in good with Fallin. Thanks to this cozy relationship, Oklahoma is set to become the first state to pass a law of this kind. Where states have deals worked out between utility companies and individual power generators, ALEC is set on repealing them. They now have a template in a last-minute sabotoage in Oklahoma.

As the use of solar power skyrockets across the U.S., fights have sprung up in several states over how much customers should be compensated for excess power produced by their solar panels and sold back to the grid — a policy known as net metering. Net metering laws have come under fire from the secretive American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group backed by fossil fuel corporations, utility companies, and the ultra-conservative Koch brothers. Forty-three states and the District of Columbia currently have net metering policies in place and ALEC has set its sights on repealing them, referring to homeowners with their own solar panels as “freeriders on the system.” ALEC presented Gov. Fallin the Thomas Jefferson Freedom award last year for her “record of advancing the fundamental Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism and individual liberty as a nationally recognized leader.”

Oklahoma “could be the first complete defeat for solar advocates in their fight against utility efforts to recover costs lost to DG [distributed generation] use,” writes Utility Dive. Net metering survived attacks in Colorado and Kansas and Vermont recently increased its policy in a bipartisan effort. Last year, Arizona added what amounts to a $5 per month surcharge for solar customers, a move that was widely seen as a compromise, particularly after ALEC and other Koch-backed groups got involved.

While any extra charge placed on potential customers is a concern, Gary hopes that like Arizona, Oklahoma’s fee is modest enough to protect her business from serious damage.

Matt Kasper, energy research assistant at the Center for American Progress, contributed to this piece.

koch