Kevin Stitt

 ( 1972 Births ) 

In exchange for additional appointment powers and at legislative leaders' request, Stitt signed into law SB1, which established the Oklahoma Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency in the legislative branch. Under the direction of an oversight committee composed of members of the State Senate and House of Representatives, the office will provide auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the legislature relating to the governor's proposed budget and expenditures by the executive branch.

In a July 2019 op-ed in the Tulsa World followed by a letter to the chiefs of 35 Oklahoma tribes, Stitt called on tribal leaders to renegotiate the terms of the compact before its expiration date. In particular, he called for increasing the exclusivity fees to between 13% and 25%. Stitt's office maintained the compact is not subject to automatic renewal, a claim the tribes rejected, believing it will continue indefinitely unless changes are mutually agreed upon. In either event, the Oklahoma Legislature would presumably have to be involved in any renegotiation, since the state's compact offer is defined and controlled by state statute, and federal law requires that the United States Department of the Interior approve any new compact terms.

In August 2019, the various tribes refused to meet with Stitt to negotiate the amount of the exclusivity fees unless he conceded that the compact would otherwise automatically renew. Stitt had proposed a September 3 date to begin discussions but the tribes rejected it.

At the end of December 2019, the Choctaw, Cherokee Nation, and Chickasaw Nation tribes filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma to end the dispute over the compact. On December 31, Stitt signed an extension to the hunting and fishing license compact with the Choctaw Nation, a previous point of contention.

On July 28, 2020, U.S. District Judge Timothy D. DeGiusti ruled in the tribes' favor, holding that their compacts with the state automatically renewed for an additional 15-year term on January 1, 2020. A week earlier, on July 21, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the new gaming compacts signed by the state and the Comanche Nation and the Otoe-Missouria Tribe are invalid under state law. The Court ruled that Stitt "exceeded his authorities" in entering into the compacts because they would have allowed gaming that is illegal in Oklahoma, like sports betting.

On July 9, 2020, the United States Supreme Court decided in McGirt v. Oklahoma that half of the land of the state of Oklahoma made up of tribal nations like the Cherokee are officially Native American tribal land jurisdictions. Stitt, a Cherokee Nation citizen, sought to reverse the Supreme Court decision, but in 2021 Oklahoma could not block the federal action to grant the Cherokee Nation along with the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Nation and Seminole Nations reservation status.

In May 2023, Stitt vetoed legislation that would have allowed students to wear tribal regalia during their graduation ceremonies, but the state legislature overrode his veto.

In June 2023, Senator Greg Treat criticized senators who did not show up for a tribal compact vote to override one of Stitt's vetoes. The next month, he called Stitt "ineffective" and said they were one vote shy of overriding. When the override vote was called again, they got enough votes, but Stitt called it an "illegitimate process". Tribal leaders applauded the override. In July 2020, a video Stitt made had a number of erroneous claims about Native American rights, such as that they do not have to obey the speed limit.

Also, one day after the veto override, Attorney General Gentner Drummond entered a "federal lawsuit on behalf of the state" originally brought by Stitt against the U.S. Department of Interior and four tribal nations. Drummond claimed Stitt was "betraying his duties to the state and wasting taxpayer money on private law firms" and that the compacts Stitt signed "with the Comanche, the Otoe-Missouria Tribe, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, and the Kialegee Tribal Town are invalid because he signed the compacts without first getting legislative approval for expanded types of gaming listed within them, including sports betting."

In April 2020, Stitt ordered a massive purchase of hydroxychloroquine, a drug of unproven efficacy as a treatment against the coronavirus but which had been heavily promoted by Donald Trump and his allies. By January 2021, Oklahoma had a $2 million stockpile of hydroxychloroquine which it sought to offload.

On July 30, 2021, Oklahoma Watch released a review of Stitt's Twitter since he received the COVID-19 vaccine and found he posted the least on social media to encourage vaccination of all the governors of states surrounding Oklahoma, including Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and New Mexico. Only 1.53%, or 3 out of 193, of Stitt's tweets encouraged COVID-19 vaccination. It also found that Stitt had not used his Facebook account to encourage vaccination in months and that none of his last 45 press releases were about vaccination, at a time when Oklahoma had one of the highest COVID-19 test positivity rates in the country.

Stitt sent U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin a letter requesting that COVID-19 vaccine requirements for the Oklahoma National Guard be suspended. Stitt subsequently fired the commander of the Oklahoma National Guard because the commander had advocated for his troops to be vaccinated. Stitt's new appointee refused to implement the COVID-19 vaccine requirements.

The governor of Oklahoma is responsible for making appointments to Oklahoma state courts upon a vacancy. Candidates for appointment are reviewed by the Oklahoma Judicial Nominating Commission, which forwards three names to the governor. The governor appoints one of the three without further confirmation. As of 2020, there are 29 appellate court judges (nine Supreme Court justices, five Court of Criminal Appeals judge, 12 Court of Civil Appeals judges, and three Court of Military Appeals judges) and 156 trial judges (75 district judges, 77 associate district judges, and four Workers Compensation Court judges) subject to the gubernatorial appointment process.