Oklahoma County Court Clerk

Oklahoma County DA accuses state panel of violating Open Meeting Act

Human Services Commission Chairman Richard L. DeVaughn is out of the state and said he had not read the letter.

"I'm very, very confident that we have never violated the Open Meeting Act in any form," DeVaughn said. "I'll leave it at that until I can get back next week and see the letter."

District Attorney David Prater said he has asked for information about how the commission conducts its meetings and organizes its subcommittees.

The letter is "giving them a chance to defend their position, giving them some due process," Prater said.

Violations of the state's open meeting law could bring misdemeanor criminal charges against the commission's individual members.

"These are serious violations," Prater said. "When commissions and boards deal with public money, the public needs to understand what is happening."

The complaints stem from the commission's June 14 meeting. The allegations are that an agenda item that raised child-care co-payments was lumped in with a vote to approve next year's budget and that commissioners did not properly adjourn after an executive session.

Prater stated that an agenda item concerning a $500 million budget "could never spell out each and every detail."

"However, the core purposes of the Open Meeting Act dictate that the public be able to ascertain what actions are to be considered or taken by its governing bodies, and my concern is that with very little effort on the part of the commission, this particular agenda item could have been made to far better advance the purposes of openness in government," he said.

Prater said the commission did not willfully violate the law, but he advised members against vaguely wording or phrasing items that contain "massive policy changes."

In addition, Commissioner Steven Dow said he was purposely kept off the Budget Subcommittee to keep its membership under a quorum of the board specifically to circumvent the open meeting law.

Dow and Oklahoma Watchdog Publisher Peter Rudy took the complaints to Prater, who has jurisdiction because the meeting was held in Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma Watchdog is an online news blog.

"Oklahoma's laws on openness in government serve an important and noble purpose," Prater states.

Oklahoma Online Court Records To Be Uniform

Oklahoma Online Court Records To Be Uniform

Two case management systems and 77 county clerks have created a hodgepodge of electronic court records available online for public review in Oklahoma.

That could change starting next year, when the first four counties to join a statewide management system go online.

In 2007, the Oklahoma State Courts Network began raising money to fund a searchable electronic system to replace a largely paper-based system.

The decision about whether to post the electronic court records that have been collected in past years has been left to individual county clerks.

But that could soon change.

The new statewide system, which will cost about $28 million, will allow users to read specific court filings online. Plans call for each county to post the same type of records, thus turning the hodgepodge into a uniform state filing system across all 77 counties.

Currently, only a few counties post a wide range of electronic documents, and Tulsa County is not one of them.

"I have the full expectation from the time we run this out ... we'll be adding the same records for every county in the same way," said Mike Evans, administrative director of the courts. "That's not how it's been done in the past."

Evans said it's still unclear what records will be posted online and in what form.

The Tulsa County Court Clerk's Office posts online only specific filings related to small claims court cases.

Sally Howe Smith, Tulsa County's court clerk, said concerns about publishing private information, such as Social Security numbers, have kept her office from putting additional court filings online.

Smith said she wouldn't mind posting more documents as long as county clerks are protected from lawsuits alleging a violation of privacy.

Possible ways to tackle confidentiality issues include a law or court ruling stating that the filer has to advise the court of any confidential information in the documents or a law stating that the filer would not hold the court clerk liable for the information's release, Smith said.

But other court clerks, including those in Oklahoma, Cleveland and Garfield counties, already post a wealth of documents online.

Garfield County posts about 15 types of records online, including those related to traffic tickets, wildlife tickets, criminal felonies and most criminal misdemeanors, Court Clerk Margaret Jones said.

The Pacific reporter

(3) On March 14, 1893, execution was issued by the clerk of the district court of Oklahoma county on said judgment, and was levied on the lots of MK Young, ...

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With the approval of the board of county commissioners, the county judge may appoint a deputy clerk for said court to be held in said county at Bennington, ...

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Revised laws of Oklahoma, 1910, being a compilation, classification and revision of all general laws of the state of Oklahoma in force and effect on the 25th day of February, 1911 (excepting laws enacted subsequent to the adjournment of the extraordinary session of the Legislature which convened in January, 1910), as adopted by an act of the Legislature, approved March 3, 1911, to which are added the Magna charta, Articles of confereration, Declaration of independence, Constitution of the United States, the Organic act of Oklahoma territory, the Enabling act and constitution of the state of Oklahoma, the naturalization laws of the United States, and the act adopting the revised laws, together with annotations of decisions of the Supreme court of Oklahoma, from volume 1 to volume 27, inclusive; of the Criminal court of appeals of Oklahoma, from volume 1 to volume 4, inclusive; of the Supreme court of Dakota prior to 1890, and of the Supreme court of Kansas prior to 1893

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Supplement to the Revised laws of Oklahoma of 1910, including all laws of a general nature (except appropriation bills) contained in the session laws of 1910-11, 1913, 1915, 1916, and 1917 ...

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