Republican lawmakers at the state capitol have some serious questions to ask Gov. Kevin Stitt about his plan to eliminate the state Forestry Office following his firing of Forestry Director Mark Goeller.
Here’s how NonDoc Media reported the growing developments:
“Speaking of clockwork, during Gov. Kevin Stitt’s time in office, he has routinely found himself at odds with leaders of the Legislature on a variety of topics, often involving revenue and his unending desire for tax cuts.
This year, Stitt rankled Republican lawmaker feathers with recent remarks about his termination of Mark Goeller, the longtime director of the Oklahoma Forestry Services division of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry. Stitt has lodged criticism at the state response to an outbreak of wildfires March 14, and he suggested last week that the entire division could be disbanded to eliminate bureaucracy and instead send funds to local fire departments.
That proposal landed poorly in the Legislature, particularly among rural lawmakers whose communities receive significant assistance from OFS. Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton, for instance, has been a volunteer firefighter for 34 years.
“It sounds like a really bad idea to me,” Paxton (R-Tuttle) said of Stitt’s proposal Thursday. “I don’t understand. I would like to have a conversation with the governor that we have not had — a conversation regarding the firing of the former director, or the forestry department itself. But it is a very useful tool for fire departments in the state. It has been for the last 100 years, and we should keep it. We should make sure it’s efficient, but we need to keep it in place.”
Now, in an effort to lock in state funding for Oklahoma Forestry Services and prevent the governor from using his line-item veto powers to weaken that division of OAFF, the year’s first Joint Committee on Appropriations and Budget meeting could be on tap this week.
“There’s a possibility of that. I know we’re currently in conversations with my counterpart in the Senate to see if we can bring something — especially in regards to this forestry issue — to a quick conclusion,” said House A&B Committee Chairman Trey Caldwell (R-Lawton). “So I think that’s something that is definitely on the table.”
Between a potential JCAB meeting — for which legislative leaders have promised to reveal bills at least 24 hour before they are voted on — and Stitt’s pledge to release more information about how he says OFS failed to deploy all resources for the March fires, expect additional drama on the topic sooner than later.”
