Since Superintendent Walters took office 18 months ago, I have grown increasingly concerned about the budget performance, spending priorities, and transparency surrounding the Department. Conditions at the Department, the manner in which the Superintendent and the Board of Education have treated members of the Legislature from both parties and from both the House of Representatives and the State Senate has been, to say the least, unprofessional, beneath the dignity of a statewide elected official, and most importantly, contrary to the best interest of the taxpayers and students of the State of Oklahoma.
Then follows a "non-exhaustive" list of Walters various acts of misbehavior.
* Denied entry to execut8ive sessions to legislators.
* Refused or delayed inquiries from Appropriations and Budget Committee, to the point of requiring two subpoenas from the committee to get him to respond.
* Failed to comply with legislative budget directives regarding dispersal of School Security Dollars. This is the one where Walters decided on his own that the law didn't say what it actually said, and he wouldn't let funds for school security roll over.
* Failed to turn over travel expenditure information. This is the one where Walters spent a bunch of taxpayer money for travel and wouldn't tell the legislators where, when or how much.
* Failed to turn over records requested under the open records act until the Attorney General had to threaten him with civil or criminal action.
* Defied legislature's authority by refusing to execute required funding for asthma inhalers.
And that's not even getting into issues like being a four star jerk over pushback for his new unconstitutional Bible requirement and just generally being contentious and very bad at his actual job.
There's that time that he fumbled grant money and his general attempts to make up his own rules about all sorts of things, as the latter says,
promulgating administrative rules absent explicit statutory authority. The latter resulted in a unanimous opinion by the State Supreme Court, finding that Superintendent Walters and the State Board of Education “is attempting to exercise unauthorized quasi-judicial authority in enforcement proceedings before the Board that involve the Edmond School District …”. The High Court’s ruling resulted in administrative actions of the Board of Education being invalidated.
Citing a "pattern of overreach, disregard for legislative oversight and policy making, and lack of concern for student safety and budgetary stability," the letter asks the legislature to "investigate any possible willful neglect of duty or incompetency on the part of Superintendent Walters as described in Article 8 Section 1 of the Oklahoma Constitution."
McBride doesn't sound happy about going after a fellow Republican, but he pretty much sums up the dysfunctional situation (well, I've skipped over the attacks on teachers and books and his personal national PR drive):
I have repeatedly met one-on-one with the Superintendent, where I pled with him to please focus on the responsibilities and duties of his office, and work with the Legislature to improve and advance the cause of Public Education in Oklahoma. These pleas have fallen on deaf ears and the Superintendent has chosen to pursue an aggressively opposite path, one filled with name-calling, obstruction, defiance, and secrecy.
Walters, for his part, has struck the same aggressive and combative attitude as always. He told KOCO News:
If they decide to move forward with that, it would be the most unprecedented move in state history to undermine the will of the Oklahoman voters. We're going to continue to put parents and grandparents in charge of their kids' education. We're going to continue to put Oklahoma on a path to be successful in education. So, I will never back down to moderate Republicans partnering with Democrats to try to overturn the will of the people. We're not going to allow it.
That's Walters. He doesn't answer to any legislators, and he will personally decree what will or will not be the education law of Oklahoma. Maybe he's high on his national big time political contacts. Maybe he thinks God has his back. Maybe he's just one more MAGA dudebro who thinks he can just throw his alpha male authoritarian weight around. Watch to see how many signatures end up on the latter, whether or not the legislators have the spine to actually impeach him, and how many more reasons he can give them to want to in the meantime. Stay tuned!
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