Representative Logan Phillips announced Tuesday he has filed a lawsuit against the Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES) for it to release documents concerning the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funds. Those funds have come under scrutiny due to allegations of misspending through a contract with Class Wallet to help distribute funds to parents of public school students to assist with education related expenses. A federal audit indicates money from that fund was misspent.
Phillips says he’s been asking questions and not getting responses.
“On May 4, I began making formal requests for information into the state’s expenditures of the GEER funds under the Cares Act,” Phillips said. “On May 5 and again on May 6, I followed up with the Office of Management and Enterprise Services on those requests after being informed they did not have access to the documents requested. In addition to my direct requests through OMES, I also submitted open records requests to the offices of Governor Kevin Stitt and Secretary of Education Ryan Walters. No response was ever received from any of these requests. Due to a failure of transparency and lack of accountability regarding these important funds, I am seeking declarative and injunctive relief because I believe failure to provide the requested records is unlawful and the records need to be made publicly available immediately.”
Phillips believes the federal audit indicates there is an issue that warrants more scrutiny.
“Approximately one month ago, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General issued an audit that was extremely critical of Oklahoma’s use of GEER funds,” Phillips said. “This makes the production of these documents even more important to ensure proper oversight of expenditures and to hold accountable those persons or entities that misspent public dollars, or allowed them to be misspent. Due to ongoing investigations and audits by the Inspector General, we are looking at the possibility of 5 out of every 6 dollars of GEER funding having been misspent. This is unacceptable and the citizens of Oklahoma deserve answers.”
