The spiritual advisor for several of Oklahoma’s death row inmates filed a lawsuit against the Department of Corrections last Friday.
Rev. Jeff Hood is seeking $10 million from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for allegedly defaming him in a press release in January.
The DOC released a statement prior to the execution of Scott Eizember, who Hood was a spiritual advisor for, saying Hood would not be allowed in the execution chamber due to his history of arrests for “outbursts” in the past. The statement also said Hood has demonstrated “blatant disregard” for the families of death row inmates’ victims.
They later reversed the decision to avoid a postponement from any legal challenges.
Hood says while he has been arrested three separate times at protests across the country, he has never disrupted an execution and has never been disrespectful to victims’ families.
Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat is calling on a newly formed select committee to improve Oklahoma's economic development efforts.
The move comes after a trio of high profile competitions for high tech manufacturers where the state ultimately lost out.
Treat says he recognizes competition for these types of projects will be stiff.
"But I do want to see what we can do to put ourselves in a better position to attract the type of investment we're looking for and to land those investments ultimately," said Treat.
Most recently Oklahoma lost out to Ontario, Canada on an electric vehicle battery plant to be built by Volkswagen. The state had offered the German automaker roughly $700 million dollars in tax incentives to build in Pryor.
Panasonic is reportedly seeking incentives to build a manufacturing facility in Oklahoma after all.
According to The Oklahoman newspaper, lawmakers said Tuesday that Panasonic, whose code name has been Project Ocean, came back to the Oklahoma Department of Commerce to seek an incentive package that's currently worth nearly $700 million.
The funding has been in limbo over the past year after both Panasonic and then Volkswagen chose other locations to build electric vehicle battery manufacturing plants.
Lawmakers have put an April 15 deadline on the state's LEAD Act. If no company successfully claims the $698 million in LEAD Act funding by that date, the money will be returned to the state's general revenue fund to be appropriated elsewhere.
Oklahoma City-County’s Health Department is testing students and staff at Edmond Santa Fe after determining some may have been exposed to tuberculosis.
A spokesperson for the Health Department said the agency will be testing individuals this week as it attempts to maintain the health and safety of the community.
The Health Department did not provide specifics about who or how many of Santa Fe's population may have been exposed to TB.
House Bill 1449, clarifies how people of both biological sexes are treated under state law by defining “sex” as a person’s biological sex whether they were born a male or female. Republican Toni Hasenbeck is the measure’s author.
Nicole McAfee, Executive Director of Freedom Oklahoma, says the bill would prevent Trans women and girls from getting the help and resources they need.
"What this does is uses this kind of innocuous language of being a bill of rights that paves the way for years of discrimination for years to come," said McAfee.
McAfee also says that Trans Women and Girls aren’t going anywhere. And condemns efforts to limit their rights.
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