Sun October 14, 2007

Remembering scandals as political fraud claims linger

By Tony Thornton
Staff Writer

One former legislator already has admitted taking kickbacks.

Two others have been named as targets, as has the state's auditor and inspector. And one of the most powerful politicians of Oklahoma's first century has been indicted.

So how does the corruption scandal that has ensnared all those people stack up against others from Oklahoma's relatively brief history?

It ranks, at most, a distant second, said two people quite familiar with such things.

Oklahoma's biggest corruption scandal, by far, remains the county commissioner investigation of the early 1980s, said Keith Gaddie, political science professor at the University of Oklahoma.

"That was one of the most far-reaching investigations of local political corruption ever done in the United States,” Gaddie said.

He didn't flinch before proclaiming the county commissioner scandal bigger than the current grand jury investigation.

"There were so many people profiting from it,” Gaddie said. "Besides that, with this Little Dixie scandal, it's not as dangerous for the people blowing the whistle.”


Probe touched almost every county
The commissioner probe ended in early 1984 with more than 230 convictions or guilty pleas. "Okscam,” as it became known, netted convictions in 60 of Oklahoma's 77 counties. Those convicted included 110 sitting county commissioners and numerous other prior office-holders and contractors.
Graft among county commissioners was so ingrained, so accepted, one western Oklahoma candidate promised to accept no more than the customary 10 percent kickback from contractors if elected, Gaddie said.

To Bill Price, no other case compares to the county commissioner scandal in terms of exposed public corruption.

Price oversaw the Okscam prosecutions and helped send former Gov. David Hall to prison in 1975.

Price recalled that many commissioners saw kickbacks as an inherent perk of the office. They were commissioners, after all. What they took from vendors were simply commissions, the reasoning went.

That practice "went all the way back to statehood,” he said.

Price noted, however, that few, if any of those commissioners reported the extra "income” on their taxes or talked about it openly.

In fact, no commissioner testified against another, he said.

The reason: Their deals with equipment and material suppliers were so private, one commissioner never knew how much a colleague was getting, Price said.

The kickbacks caused a 40 percent increase in costs paid by counties, Price said.

As he considered other scandals of his lifetime, two thoughts came to Price:

•"We've sure had a lot of political corruption scandals.”

•The ongoing investigation involving southeast Oklahoma probably ranks second, even ahead of the prosecutions of Hall and Gov. David Walters, Price's opponent in the 1990 general election.

"The way they (prosecutors) ultimately treated it, it was not as severe as this, and they couldn't prove a quid-pro-quo,” he said.

Walters was indicted on eight felony charges involving illegal campaign contributions. He was allowed to plead guilty to one misdemeanor. The felonies were dropped.


Current investigation still ongoing
A federal grand jury has spent more than a year investigating political corruption focused in southeast Oklahoma.
It delivered its first indictments Oct. 5, when it leveled conspiracy and other charges against former state Sen. Gene Stipe and his brother Francis.

The indictment accuses them of paying kickbacks to former state Rep. Mike Mass, who was head of the House appropriations committee when he earmarked several hundred thousand dollars for a McAlester dog food plant built on Stipe's property.

Francis Stipe was on the private foundation that passed on the state money to Gene Stipe's then-business partner, Steve Phipps.

Phipps and Mass pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges before the grand jury could indict them. Phipps admitted paying kickbacks to two other legislators.

FBI documents allege Gene Stipe also oversaw several schemes to get favored political candidates elected by using "straw donors” to get around contribution limits. He already is on probation for doing that in a 1998 congressional race.

People identified by the FBI as Stipe-backed straw donors to Dan Boren's 2004 congressional campaign also gave heavily to the 2002 campaigns of Gov. Brad Henry, state Auditor and Inspector Jeff McMahan and Mass, who ran for Congress that year, records show.

The grand jury's term, already extended once, recently was extended again until March, indicating more indictments are forthcoming.

Known targets include state Auditor and Inspector Jeff McMahan and former state Reps. Randall Erwin and Jerry Hefner. All are Democrats, as are Gene Stipe and Mass.


The three categories of graft
Gaddie, a professor at OU since 1996, has written eight books, including two almanacs of Oklahoma politics.
He said political corruption involves one of three scales:

•Small and episodic — Typically confined to one local official seeking personal gain.

•Small but widespread — Several local officials operating independently of each other to fleece the public, as with the county commissioner scandal.

•Big — Massive efforts by politicians to use and abuse their position for expansive profit.

"If we're looking at this stuff with Mass and Stipe and the straw donors, that clearly fits in the category of big,” Gaddie said.

Stipe arguably is the most powerful legislator in Oklahoma history. Gaddie calls him one of the most powerful state legislators in U.S. history.


Corrupt culture predates statehood
There's a reason Oklahoma's political history is so colorful, Gaddie said. It dates to the land run of 1889, when the first "Sooners” broke the law by staking their claims before the gunshot that signaled the land run's opening.
It didn't take long for that spirit to envelop Oklahoma's political landscape, Gaddie said.

"Our government had the same kind of wildcatter attitude as our main two industries, coal and oil,” he said. "In a way, we kind of made up the rules as we went along.”

http://newsok.com/article/keyword/3147194/