Tulsa Election 2022: City council campaign contribution reports

Yesterday, August 15, 2022, at 5 p.m., was the deadline for campaign contribution and expenditure reports for candidates in any August 23 election. This includes the City of Tulsa general election as well as runoff elections for statewide office, county office, and the legislature.

The legislature has created a mess of disparate filing offices and methods. Rather than making it convenient for candidates to file and citizens to search from a single ethics database for every election in the state, county candidates file paperwork at the county election board (at a time when election boards are scrambling to prepare for early voting and election day itself), school board candidates file with the school district clerk (who is hired by the incumbents and might have an incentive to make it very inconvenient for challengers to find out where the incumbents are getting their funds), and municipal candidates file with the city or town clerk. The legislature has just made things worse this session, opening the door to suppression of information and biased enforcement by larger cities.

Meanwhile, legislative, statewide, and judicial candidates file electronically with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission. For a few brief shining years, candidates for large municipalities and counties were also filing electronically through the same system, but apparently some public information can be too public for the comfort of some local officials, and their friends in the legislature reversed course.

The Tulsa County Election Board is always very prompt in responding to email requests for filings, sending scans in reply. The Tulsa Public Schools clerk demands an Open Records request, which she may or may not get around to processing before the election.

Of all the local-government ethics filing repositories I've dealt with, the City of Tulsa clerk's office is the best at making information promptly available to everyone. Here is the City of Tulsa campaign contribution report home page. When a filing comes in, it is physically time-stamped, scanned, and immediately posted to the website, with filings sorted to different webpages by office, and then within each page by candidate. Filings from previous elections are retained at the bottom of the page in an archive section. I appreciate this. There are some improvements that could be made: A standard naming template for PDFs and links, a way to download the entire collection of files, original electronic files (more searchable than scanned and OCRed paper reports).

If you are a candidate on the ballot, and your campaign committee has raised OR spent more than $1,000, you're required to file a Statement of Organization within 10 days and then you're required to file a Contributions and Expenditures report between 14 and 8 days before the election, covering all of your contributions and expenditures through the 15th day before the election. There are also quarterly filing requirements for the rest of the year. PACs who give to municipal campaigns are also required to file quarterly reports.

Based on the scans available on the City Clerk's website, here are the City of Tulsa candidates on the August 23 ballot who have filed timely reports:

• District 1: NONE
• District 2: NONE
• District 3: NONE
• District 4: Laura Bellis, Michael Birkes, Michael Feamster, Matthew Fransein
• District 5: Ty Walker
• District 6: Christian Bengel, Connie Dodson
• District 7: Lori Decter Wright
• District 8: Phil Lakin
• District 9: Lee Ann Crosby*, Chad Hotvedt

Some other candidates kinda-sorta made a half-hearted attempt at complying:

• District 1: Only David Harris has filed a Statement of Organization for the 2022 election cycle, but no candidate has filed any Campaign and Expenditures report for this cycle.
• District 2: Incumbent Jeannie Cue filed a 2022 Statement of Organization and quarterly reports up to and including the period ending June 30, but no candidate has filed the required pre-election report.
• District 3: Crista Patrick filed a 2022 Statement of Organization and filed a supplemental report for the $1,000 she received from the Home Builders Association, but no candidate has filed the required pre-election report.
• District 4: Bobby Dean Orcutt filed a 2022 Statement of Organization and a report for the period ending June 30, but has not filed the required pre-election report. Kathryn Lyons, a 2020 candidate who considered a 2022 race, and incumbent Kara Joy McKee, who made a late decision not to run for re-election, both filed reports earlier in the cycle.
• District 5: Incumbent Mykey Arthrell-Knezek did not file a Statement of Organization for the 2020 cycle, filed a contributions and expenditures report for the period ending June 30, but has not filed the required pre-election report. Adam "Grant" Miller filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report.
• District 6: Lewana Harris filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report.
• District 7: Jerry Griffin filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report. Ken Reddick filed a 2022 Statement of Organization but has not filed any contributions and expenditures reports.
• District 8: Scott Houston filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report.
• District 9: Incumbent Jayme Fowler filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report. Lee Ann Crosby filed a Statement of Organization, a June 30 report, and a "continuing report of contributions" including late July contributions, which suggests a confused but good-faith effort to comply.

In addition to candidates, two political action committees filed reports with the City Clerk.

Greater Tulsa PAC (GTPAC) had $14,346.35 in the bank as of June 30, but had not spent any money other than for administrative and fundraising costs. The PAC's chairman is Jacob Heisten, treasurer is Toni Garrison of Kellyville. This is presumably the PAC established to help Mayor GT Bynum IV re-elect rubber-stamp councilors.

Tulsa Biz Political Action Committee (TulsaBizPAC), an arm of the Tulsa Regional Chamber, filed a 2022 Statement of Organization, but has not filed the required quarterly report since 2018. TulsaBizPAC helps to ensure the election of councilors who will keep shoveling city tax dollars to the Tulsa Regional Chamber. Three candidates (David Harris in District 1, Michael Feamster in District 4, and Jayme Fowler in District 9) have announced their endorsement by TulsaBizPAC.