The effort of three Republican state Representatives to have the Oklahoma Supreme Court disqualify Corporation Commissioner Todd Hiett from cases involving ONG, OG&E and PSO echoed a similar move weeks ago by another Commissioner.
Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony called on Commissioner Hiett to either resign or disqualify himself from some of the cases involved, but Hiett, facing allegations of sexually groping a man in public and drunkenness, refused to give up his office.
As Reps. Tom Gann Kevin West and Rick West filed their request for a writ of prohibition against Hiett, Anthony noted he had taken the same position in a deliberating opinion filed in ONG’s $527 million rate case on August 23, 2024. Earlier that week, Anthony explicitly asked Hiett on the record if he was going to recuse himself from the case.
Hiett did not answer but actively participated during a hearing in the matter. Then on August 27, Hiett cast the deciding vote in the case, approving a $31 million rate increase for ONG customers. Anthony voted against it, saying “I do not believe this proceeding has fully complied with state law, including Ethics Rules.”
“I have easily filed more than 1,000 pages of deliberating and dissenting opinions in the last three years, pointing out where the constitution, state statutes and OCC rules have been violated – usually at ratepayers’ expense,” said Anthony upon hearing of the similarity of the legislators’ lawsuit against Hiett to his August 23 opinion.
“It is gratifying to know that people are reading my filings and using them as a blueprint to join the fight for honest government. These are multi-billion-dollar matters. I am pleased to see others who care are speaking up.”
On Wednesday, September 11, Anthony filed a brief of his own at the Oklahoma Supreme Court, asking the Court to deny a suit filed by Hiett against Anthony last month in which Hiett claimed Anthony was interfering in the OCC’s personnel investigation into Hiett’s misconduct. Anthony had called the investigation’s secrecy and limited scope (which excluded criminal conduct) “ridiculous” and “a joke,” and demanded instead a “legitimate, thorough, transparent, independent investigation” in an August 14 filing.
On August 19, Hiett filed suit against Anthony, asking the Supreme Court to prohibit “Commissioner Anthony from taking any further part in the independent investigation, … attempting … to perform his own investigation, and from making further public comment or filings related to the investigation.”
In his response brief, Anthony wrote that “all the facts and materials presented by the Petitioner [Hiett] in his Brief and in Petitioner’s Appendix should be disregarded” since they are about old, closed rate cases, not the matters involving Hiett’s misconduct. The response brief also quotes a transcript from the OCC’s August 20, 2024 meeting at which Melvin Hall, one of the outside attorneys hired to conduct the OCC’s personnel investigation, denied that he had been intimidated or that Anthony had interfered.
Now that Anthony has responded, the Court might make a decision about Hiett’s lawsuit at any time. The Court has said oral arguments are not anticipated. The Court could similarly decide immediately about the state representatives’ petition against Hiett, or it may ask for Hiett to respond.
The status of complaints filed at the Ethics Commission and the Council on Judicial Complaints is confidential. By law, the complaints filed in the utilities’ fuel cases at the OCC shall have a separate proceeding, but those public hearings have not been scheduled yet. The Attorney General has also not yet indicated if or when he will issue an official opinion in response to the state representatives’ request.