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Tulsa city election process history
Here is a brief history of all the changes to the City of Tulsa Charter, Article VI, Elections. That link leads to the current text of Article VI and the text of each change, with the ballot language and election results of each. When Tulsa adopted a mayor-council form of...
Tulsa Election 2011: AGAINST all propositions
Only seven districts have Tulsa City Council races but voters in every district of the City of Tulsa can vote Tuesday, November 8, 2011, on the four charter amendment propositions on the general election ballot. On the left of the ballot (under a city council race, if you have one)...
SOTs use non-Tulsan petition circulators, notaries
The Save Our Tulsa charter amendment petitions -- pushing to add four at-large members to the City Council (including the Mayor), to eliminate partisan labels from city election ballots, and to hold city elections on the same ballot as national and statewide elections -- were certified by City Clerk Mike...
General Election Day 2010
Happy Election Day! Polls open across Oklahoma at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. Results should start rolling in soon after. The state election board website will update results as they are received from the county election boards. These will lag the results from media sources, as TV and...
Clueless SOTs and their enablers
It appears that the rich old SOTs, who seek to take Tulsa back from, well, Tulsans, are attempting to marshal the resources for gathering the necessary signatures to put their aristocratic propositions on the ballot. Word is that they aren't getting the kind of support and traction they may have...
At-large councilors: They're back?
We're still waiting to see the actual text of the charter amendments proposed by the Tulsa City Council Election Reform Task Force, led by Councilor G. T. Bynum. In the meantime, the Tulsa Whirled's Janet Pearson used her Sunday, July 4, 2010, column to renew the call for the Whirled's...
Tulsa Election Reform Task Force info; Bynum response on charter amendments
Last night (July 1, 2010), the Tulsa City Council postponed consideration of three proposed charter amendments involving the city election process. Following the meeting, District 9 City Councilor G. T. Bynum was kind enough to send me some background information on the proposed amendments, including a link to the page...
Dewey Bartlett Jr backtracks on Tulsans for Better Government
Steven Roemerman has a post up on Dewey Bartlett Jr's belated denials that he was a member of Tulsans for Better Government, the group that in 2005 unsuccessfully circulated a petition to change the Tulsa City Charter to reduce the number of City Council districts to six and add three...
Squaring Bartlett Jr's statement with his record
Last Tuesday, I received an e-mail from the Tulsa County Republican Party with the title "An Open Letter to All Republicans from Dewey Bartlett Jr." The introduction says the letter is "the outcome of meetings between the [Tulsa County Republican Party] elected officials and the Bartlett [Jr] campaign officials," which...
Rewriting Tulsans for Better Government history
Still too swamped for a detailed analytical post, but I must at least point out the misstatements at the end of last Friday's story in the daily about the initiative petition filed by Tulsans for Better Government in support of a charter change for non-partisan elections. The original web story...
District 4 endorsements
Endorsements are starting to pile up in the Tulsa City Council District 4 race, with Eric Gomez receiving the support of the Tulsa World editorial board and the Tulsa Area Republican Assembly (TARA), and Maria Barnes being endorsed by neighborhood activists like Scott Swearingen and Greg Bledsoe. You can read...
At-large barge runs aground; Murphy's sweet deal
The final report from Tulsa's Citizens' Commission on City Government is the topic of this week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly. The commission, appointed by then-Mayor Bill LaFortune last December, finished on schedule, made some constructive recommendations, including a recommendation against adding at-large seats to the City Council. You can...
At-large barge runs aground
An edited version of this piece was published in the June 21, 2006, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The archived version is no longer online. Here is my blog entry linking to the article. Posted on the web August 2, 2009. Links to the Citizens' Commisison final report added October...
City Hall update: HB 2559, SB 1324, Susan Neal, and non-partisan elections
An edited version of this piece was published on May 10, 2006, in Urban Tulsa Weekly. The archived version is no longer online. Posted on the web, with hyperlinks to related articles, on August 18, 2010. We're now a month past the city election, and it's time to follow up...
Inauguration day photos
Monday afternoon, I pulled my nine-year-old out of school early and we met my wife and the other two kids at Gilcrease Museum for the inauguration of the Mayor, City Auditor, and City Council of Tulsa. We were happy to be there to honor our friends on the Council who...
The same old tricks in District 6
Today I spent an hour or so walking neighborhoods for District 6 City Councilor Jim Mautino. I had family obligations, so I arrived after several others had already been hard at work for a few hours. Jim's volunteers included leaders in Homeowners for Fair Zoning and Tulsans Defending Democracy. There...
Mautino's bipartisan appeal
Greg Bledsoe, an attorney whom I know in connection with Tulsans Defending Democracy, has written a ringing tribute to District 6 City Councilor Jim Mautino. Greg is a Democratic activist, but he thinks very highly of Mautino, a Republican. A little over a year ago I had the pleasure of...
At-large petition dead; LaFortune forms Citizens' Commission
An edited version of this column was published in the December 14, 2005, edition of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is still online, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Here's my blog entry linking to the article. Posted October 28, 2017. The at-large councilor petition appears to be...
A quick round up
We were at a very entertaining Christmas program at our church tonight, a dinner theatre play called "In Bethlehem Inn," written by John Carter. The audience members are guests eating at the inn as strange things begin to happen outside. It was well written, well acted, and well directed --...
Bogus signature collection?
Know what you're signing. There are reports that Tulsans for Badder Government, the elite bunch pushing for diluting representative democracy in Tulsa, are obtaining petition signatures under false pretenses: A person went to the post office and a petition was presented for him/her to sign. The top petition page was...
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