Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond removed the Oklahoma State Board of Education’s attorney, Cara Nicklas, for not adhering to an official AG Opinion on allowing legislators to attend executive sessions of agency boards. In turn, the Board limited its actions during its regular meeting on Thursday.
Oklahoma Voice’s Nuria Martinez-Keel writes former State Department of Education general counsel and current general counsel for Drummond, Brad Clark, attended the meeting as the Board’s legal advisor. However, board members were hesitant to consult him and chose not to vote on non-urgent agenda items.
The Board has not conducted an executive session over the past couple of meetings.
Read the Oklahoma Voice story here.
You do not have a source for this allegation. AG Drummond has given no reason for denying my 20i application. He certainly could not have based his reason on my failure to adhere to an official AG Opinion. That is blatantly false. Unless a board member is your source, neither you nor Attorney General Drummond would know the legal advice I gave to the board members on this nuanced issue. As an attorney, I cannot disclose what I advised my clients in private but I can say my legal advice relied on the formal AG opinions and case law in effect at the time I advised my clients, which are “binding on all state officers,” as Brad Clark stated during Thursday’s meeting. This is also presumably why the current AG published an opinion revoking the preexisting formal opinion on executive sessions, which the board subsequently followed. I have never considered myself to be oppositional with AG Drummond. I appreciate your efforts to provide factually correct information to Oklahoma citizens and your sensitivity to the disadvantages a nonpolitical attorney has when politicians are vying for publicity and the nonpolitical attorney cannot provide privileged information to the press.