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Tulsa County Republicans oppose at-large council, 4-to-Fix renewal, river tax, chamber funding

Yesterday, the 2011 Tulsa County Republican Convention unanimously approved the recommendation of the convention's platform committee to be the Tulsa County Republican Party's official platform. The platform includes clear stands on several current city and county issues. Here is the local section of the platform in its entirety: LOCAL GOVERNMENT...

Posted by Michael Bates on March 27, 2011 4:43 AM

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...

Posted by Michael Bates on October 22, 2010 9:48 PM

Rich old SOTs: Who is "Save Our Tulsa"?

Who is backing the latest effort to dilute grassroots influence over City Hall? I took the list of 23 names in the list of Save Our Tulsa steering committee members in John Brock's email and did some research. According to recent voter registration records, the median age is of Save...

Posted by Michael Bates on October 12, 2010 11:42 PM

"Save <em>Our</em> Tulsa for our kind, dahling"

There they go again. Many of the same people involved in the attempt to recall Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock, many of the same people involved in Tulsans for Better Government (the group promoting at-large councilors) -- they're on the list of named members of a group...

Posted by Michael Bates on October 10, 2010 10:53 PM

Bartlett Jr showing his TfBG loyalties?

What are the odds? After protesting loudly during the mayoral campaign that he wasn't a member of Tulsans for Better Government and had no idea how his name got on that list, Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr is now talking sympathetically about the concepts -- at-large councilors and non-partisan elections...

Posted by Michael Bates on July 12, 2010 12:32 PM

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...

Posted by Michael Bates on July 6, 2010 6:24 AM

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...

Posted by Michael Bates on October 27, 2009 12:10 PM

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...

Posted by Michael Bates on June 21, 2006 10:12 PM

A timeline of the "at-large councilor" push

Bobby of Tulsa Topics has done a great service by collecting in one place, in chronological order, the petition origins of the recent drive to dismember three Tulsa City Council districts and add three at-large seats on the Council, and the parallel thread leading to the Mayor's "Citizens' Commission on...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 18, 2005 11:16 PM

At-large councilors

An edited version of this piece was published in the October 26, 2005, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The archived version is no longer online. Posted on the web October 27, 2009. It's been a tough couple of years for Tulsa's traditional political establishment. The bunch that for years has...

Posted by Michael Bates on October 26, 2005 12:09 PM