A Taxing Situation
Oklahoma House Republicans find themselves in a taxing situation.
One of their own making and one that is taking a major toll on party leaders.
First it was discovered that then Speaker of the House and All-Round Boy Wonder Lance Cargill had a major problem in filing his state and federal taxes on time. And for a couple of years. Then it was discovered that he also had a similar problem with paying property taxes on time and it was “bye-bye Mr. Speaker time”, as Cargill resigned as Speaker of the Oklahoma House. Cargill did hang onto his House seat, at least until the next election, but odds are his glory days are now behind him.
In the wake of Lance Cargill’s demise as House Speaker, odds were that Representative Gus Blackwell who holds the second highest ranking elective post in the House was heir apparent to the Speaker’s position. Then it turned out that Blackwell himself had a bit of a taxing situation. It seems that for 13 years running Blackwell has been failing to pay at least half of his property taxes which are due December 31 of each year. Whoopsy. Forget Gus Blackwell as House Speaker…
So who is going to be Speaker of the House?
Well, there are some folks still in the running including Rep. John Wright of Broken Arrow, who serves as chairman of the GOP caucus; Rep. Susan Winchester, R-Chickasha, a former House leader; and Rep. Dale DeWitt, R-Braman, head of the rural caucus that includes both Republicans and Democrats. On Friday House leaders convinced Representative Chris Benge of Tulsa, chairman of the powerful House Budget and Appropriations Committee, to jump into the race for the speakership.
One can pretty much rest assured that someone, somewhere will be checking on the tax status of all four remaining “speaker wanna-be’s”.
Hopefully at least one of them has managed to file and pay their taxes on time, something they all expect the rest of us to do each year…
Oops, almost forgot.
Here’s the other members of the Oklahoma Legislature that seem to have problems paying their property taxes on time during at least one year, in some case several years:
Rep. Dennis Adkins, Rep. Charles Key, Senator Charlie Laster, Rep. Al Lindley, Rep. Al McAffrey, Rep. Judy Eason McIntyre, Rep. Richard Morrissette and Rep. Dan Sullivan.
