The U.S. attorney who spearheaded prosecutions in the Oklahoma county commissioner scandal, was the speaker of the Kingfisher Rotary Club last Tuesday.

Bill Price was the featured speaker and brought with him the book about the scandal written by Michael J. Hightower.

In the book, Hightower noted that Price’s determination to root out the “rascals” and restore faith in governance branded him as the biggest corruption buster in Oklahoma’s history.

Price said the corruption was brought to light in early 1980s, though it had been ongoing for many years previously.

Commonly referred to as the OKSCAM investigation by the FBI, the end result was hun- dreds of people being charged with taking kickbacks or simply stealing public money.

Price said that, at the time, it was the largest public corruption case ever in the nation and resulted in convictions or guilty pleas from over 230 people across 60 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties, including Kingfi sher County.

Of those, 110 were actively serving as county commissioners when they were charged.

Price noted that kickbacks and fake charges had siphoned off over $200 million per year from county funds by inflating the cost of road building supplies, which in today’s dollars would amount to almost $800 million.

He added that the root of the problem was that Oklahoma had inadequate oversight of county commissioners.

He said that many states employ county managers, which is much the same role as city managers, who oversee all county monetary transactions. He said that each of the 77 counties in the state is required to have three county commissioners, resulting in a total of 231 at any given time.

Although, according to law, they were supposed to work together as one body, commissioners in actuality operated individually, with each focusing on their own district instead of countywide needs.

The commissioners had “unchecked autonomy” and that had been the case for several decades, Price added in his report for the case.

He said one standard version of corruption involved submitting false invoices from a company based out of Atoka that was run by a woman named Dorothy Griffin, who, after much pressure, agreed to cooperate with the federal authorities to uncover the corruption.

The company would send an invoice for the supplies needed to build a road or bridge, which the county would pay.

The materials would never be delivered and the supplier would use the money from the county government to pay bribes to the county commissioners.

Price, who worked with the FBI and IRS in creating a joint investigation, was able to find suppliers who were willing to provide information about the corrupt practices and in the spring of 1981, the FBI began making arrests.

Officials and businessmen had either been convicted or pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud, tax evasion and extortion.

Price said Hightower’s book provided great detail into how the Democrat power brokers in the state such as Gene Stipe, J.D. McCarty and Leo Winters ran the business of the state through bribery and corruption.

He said the book details corruption that existed in the state since statehood in 1907.

In conclusion, he blamed structural flaws and inadequate legislation for tempting law-abiding citizens to “heed the call of their darker angels.”