Oklahoma State Auditor & Inspector Cindy Byrd has some ideas for how to prevent future financial mismanagement like what her office recently documented at Tulsa Public Schools.
Byrd released an audit Wednesday of TPS’ finances from 2015-2023. The audit showed school administrators benefitting from vendor contracts, including one whose personal company was paid hundreds of thousands by an engineering firm that was a district vendor.
It also showed administrators avoiding competitive bidding by paying vendors just below $50,000, which is the threshold for TPS' request for proposal process.
TPS officials are contesting some of the findings.
At a meeting Thursday night for the Tulsa 912 Project — a group formed based on the ideas of conservative commentator Glenn Beck — several audience members asked if the administrators responsible for this mismanagement would go to prison. Byrd said she has handed over the findings to Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office because she believes some of the outlined actions may violate criminal law but did not comment beyond that.
While Byrd refused to offer opinions about criminal prosecution, she did suggest state law change to keep the mismanagement from repeating. One suggestion is that the state better enforce competitive bidding.
She also suggested the laws addressing school districts hiring consultants be expanded.
“If that statute also covered any consulting agreements, we wouldn’t have had this problem,” she said.
Byrd also recommended school districts take after county governments, which publish their expenditures monthly.
“If you, the taxpayer, were able to go out and look at a list of expenditures made by your school district every month — see the exact vendors and the dollar amounts — things would be a little better,” she said.
Byrd made her remarks in front of Sens. Dana Prieto (R-Broken Arrow) and Christi Gillespie (R-Broken Arrow); Reps. Mark Chapman (R-Broken Arrow) and Mark Tedford (R-Tulsa); representatives for U.S. Congressman Kevin Hern (R-Tulsa) and James Lankford (R-OK), and former Republican state senator and state budget secretary Mike Mazzei.
Byrd said her ideas for laws are available for “anybody who wants to take that up.”
Even with Byrd’s suggestions, several in attendance still wanted administrators to go to prison. In response, outgoing Tulsa County Republican Party chairwoman Ronda Vuillemont-Smith provided the phone number to Drummond’s office to the audience.
“He’s running for governor, so he wants to make you happy, right? So let’s encourage him to make us happy,” said Vuillemont-Smith, who also runs the local 912 Project chapter.
A spokesperson for Drummond said his office “engages in regular and robust contact” with Byrd over possible criminal charges but declined to “confirm or deny” any investigation into the audit’s findings.
Byrd’s audit was conducted at the request of Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2022. It was prompted by former TPS administrator Devin Fletcher, who created fraudulent invoices that cost the district more than $600,000.
In addition to avoiding competitive bidding and conflicts of interest, the audit also showed the district spent $5.3 million in possible violation of a state law surrounding teachings about race and sex. The audit also says TPS provided insufficient details on $4.9 million federal COVID-19 relief funds.
TPS board President Stacey Woolley on Wednesday called Byrd’s decision to release the audit with a news conference politically motivated. Woolley argued Byrd’s speech at the 912 Project the next day alongside conservative board member E'Lena Ashley gave this appearance.
Byrd is running for lieutenant governor of Oklahoma in 2026.
