OK universities await Attorney General Pruitt’s opinion of the constitutionality of the program.
UCO and other universities across Oklahoma have halted planned building projects until the state Attorney General, E. Scott Pruitt, releases an opinion on the constitutionality of the “Master Lease Purchase Program,” which is described by the Oklahoma Regents for Higher Education as being “a method of financing the acquisition of major personal and real property that will provide cost efficiencies in finance and administration.”
The man who asked the Attorney General to give his opinion and put the program on hold was state Sen. Patrick Anderson, whose opposition to the program includes criticism of UCO adding the construction of the Medical Examiner’s Office to the Master Lease project list.
“I believe there are some fundamental flaws in the manner in which the Master Lease programs have been established and are operated that make them unconstitutional,” Anderson, a Republican from Enid, said in a statement on May 10. “The original purpose of these programs was to allow colleges and universities to save money when purchasing copiers and computers, but has now ballooned to annual multimillion dollar requests.”
Fellow state Sen. Clark Jolley, a Republican from Edmond, has been lobbying hard for relocating the Medical Examiner’s Office near UCO. He said in a telephone interview on Friday that Anderson likely doesn’t have a problem with the Medical Examiner’s office being moved here.
“I think he voted with me on passing the bill that’s bringing the ME’s office to Edmond,” he said. “I think, for him, it’s more of an issue with the constitutionality of the entire program.”
This seems to pan out in some of Anderson’s other statements.
“My only political interest is to protect the taxpayers of Oklahoma from what I believe is an unconstitutional issuance of debt,” Anderson said in a response to some of Jolley’s public statements on May 14. “I have challenged the Master Lease Program because it is used to issue millions of dollars of debt without a vote of the people or a vote of the Legislature—that clearly violates our state Constitution.”
Jolley contends that, at least in the case of the relocation of the ME’s office, a vote of the legislature was in fact cast.
The State Medical Examiner’s office lost accreditation in 2009, due in large part to “poor facilities, poor equipment and a backlog of cases,” according to Jolley. In 2019, Dr. Collie Trant was replaced as Chief Medical Examiner by Dr. Eric Pfeifer.
“To be honest, Edmond North High School’s science lab is better than what the Medical Examiner’s office has,” Jolley said, referring to the ME’s central office near OU Medical Center in Oklahoma City. “The current location can’t be retrofitted, and it can’t be remodeled.”