Stitt does not want rural Oklahoma to have arts, education or safety

Last Updated on October 11, 2022, 4:56 PM | Published: October 11, 2022

OPINION — Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt must assume he has the rural Oklahoma vote sewn up, because he just screwed over a large swath of the state with senseless vetoes. 

Last week, Stitt vetoed a set of appropriations that, to his mind, probably looked like ways to punish Oklahoma progressives. But the real impact will be felt in conservative-dominated rural areas, the last place where people plan to vote in large numbers for this spiraling candidate.

Stitt vetoed $10 million that was designated for the Oklahoma Arts Council. The funds were for grant distribution to nonprofit arts organizations throughout the state that were adversely affected by COVID-19. OAC provides grants for arts organizations to build their capacities, develop community-serving events, hands-on learning, and arts that serve members of the military and students at alternative learning facilities. 

Stitt thinks there is no “strategic value” in funding the arts in his state. 

“I support the Oklahoma Arts Council, including its management and care of the State Art Collection, but the long-term, strategic value of this appropriation has not been clearly established,” Stitt said in a prepared statement. 

What Stitt said with his veto was this: “We have enough art. If you want to make new art, Oklahoma is not going to help you do it, and if you live outside the metro areas and want to experience art, you don’t need it to live. So, quit complaining and finish processing that pig or you’ll get fired.”

The balance of Stitt’s vetoes were also deemed lacking in “long-term, strategic value,” perhaps because Stitt does not value the safety of Oklahomans, especially those living out in the country with less life-saving infrastructure. 

Stitt, who wants to build a $6 million replacement for a Governor’s Mansion that was recently renovated for $2 million, chose to veto $6 million to build nine regional emergency operations centers across the state. According to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, such facilities can be used to assess risks and spread information in the event of a disaster. 

Does Stitt not think rural areas deserve better disaster response? 

It seems a state with roughly half of its population living outside metropolitan centers could use help in the event of tornadoes, large grass fires, or attacks on strategic or military facilities in Cushing or Enid or Lawton.

And then there was the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, or OETA. Stitt vetoed $8.19 million that would have allowed OETA to make necessary upgrades to its emergency alert system.

Public television has been a target since at least 1995, when House Speaker Newt Gingrich threatened to “zero-out” congressional funding of the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. Stitt might have thought that he was defunding “Sesame Street,” which makes sense, because he is anti-public education and we all pretty much know how he feels about Bert. 

What Stitt actually did was limit the life-saving potential of the only television station serving all of Oklahoma. Stitt might think everyone in rural Oklahoma watches Newsmax and Fox News, but large swaths of this state do not get any of that mess because cable infrastructure (and internet service along with it) has never come to those areas. 

Have you ever gotten upset because your ESPN app would not work on Interstate 40 west of Clinton? Well, that’s life in Oklahoma every day for people in 2022. Sometimes, OETA is all the information they can get, and Stitt just kept OETA from improving their reach in these communities. 

Maybe Stitt was not talking about Oklahoma preparedness when he said he did not see the “long-term, strategic value” of these projects. There’s a good chance that he simply did not see the “long-term, strategic value” of them to his sputtering reelection campaign. 

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