I have some neat personal news to report! I finally know someone involved in an Oklahoma political scandal!
I’d like to give a big shout-out to former OMES Budget Director Jill Geiger and her chess-loving consulting firm for making State Auditor Cindy Byrd’s scathing audit report about Oklahoma government's wasteful, questionable, and rule-breaking spending of Covid tax dollars.
I don’t think I’ve seen Jill since I entered into dad-life hermitage over six years ago, but in the early to middle parts of the last decade, we had a lot of mutual friends, and as a result, became solid acquaintances. She's a decent domino player, has nice taste in booze, women, and music, and it was always fun to run into her alter ego – Jill-sus Quintana – at Big Lebowski watch parties:
Not pictured – The giant rug I brought.
Jill is awesome and lots of fun. She also knows her shit about budgeting and the Oklahoma government – a pair of skillsets she really profited from during the pandemic.
Via KOKH:
The State Auditor found that after the state established a COVID team to manage and distribute grant money at the state, county, and municipal levels, it hired Jill Geiger Consulting.
The auditor said Jill Geiger had previously worked at OMES in the Budget Department for 15 years until 2019…
The State Auditor found two questionable costs resulting from the contracts with the firm:
• $469,083 for administration of CRF funds. The State Auditor was unable to determine what services JGC performed.
• $249,333 for monitoring of GEER 1 and GEER 2 funds. The State Auditor was unable to determine that JGC performed all services for which the state was invoiced.
"Neither JGC as a firm, nor Geiger as an individual, appeared to have the necessary experience for administering federal grant funds," the State Auditor's office wrote in a release.
Listen. I’m not a State Auditor, and the only thing I know about the administration of federal tax dollars is Ryan Walters doesn't want to do it. That being said, if Jill Geiger wasn’t qualified to do this job, I don’t know who could be.
Seriously, I'll admit I'm a tad biased here, but as I mentioned, Jill knows her shit when it comes to all things Oklahoma government. In fact, I'd rarely bring up the Oklahoma political stuff around her because she'd either make me feel stupid, or bring up the time I wrote that she was one of Mary Fallin's cronies.
If Jill was smart and opportunistic enough to financially capitalize on that knowledge during a well-funded time of international crisis, when state leadership was throwing money around to all their buddies, donors and BBQ pit masters, I kind of want to channel my inner Stitt and thank her for a job well done.
That being said, some of the details from the audit report do admittedly look bad.
For example, Jill did receive a no-bid contract, and due to her long tenure as a government employee, there were some obvious conflicts of interest.
Now, were those conflicts as blatant and suspicious as giving your husband's IT firm millions of dollars in no-bid state contracts? Not at all, but still conflicts nonetheless.
Via Yawn Doc:
In May 2020, OMES awarded Geiger’s company a no-bid contract to administer, monitor and provide reporting on the CARES Forward money. Byrd said bids should have been sought for the $325,000 contract. A former co-worker of Geiger’s was assigned to provide oversight and monitoring of Geiger’s work.
Byrd said OMES paid Jill Geiger Consulting before verifying any work had been performed. In some instances, she said her office was unable to determine whether the work had occurred.
Altogether, OMES paid Jill Geiger Consulting $1.1 million for the administration of CARES Forward and the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief funds from 2020 to 2022. The state auditor’s office is questioning all of the $718,416 that OMES paid Jill Geiger Consulting in the 2022 fiscal year, Byrd said.
To be very clear, I haven’t done a deep dive into this topic. I haven’t discussed it with any Moles, or even Jill – a person who I assume is probably reading this article right now with equal parts bemusement and terror.
With those biases declared, this situation does feel like a mild mountain being made of an Ogle Mole Hill, and far less egregious than the other grifting scandals that have taken place in state government under the Stitt administration.
Here’s what Jill told Yawn Doc about it:
“Our company was tasked with supporting the rapid issuance of $1.2 billion in federal disaster relief to those agencies and organizations on the front lines struggling to make payroll and keep people in their homes, not to mention those agencies who were battling against the disease that was killing thousands of Oklahomans,” Geiger said. “As the SAI report mentions, these were mostly mistakes of proper documentation or procedural steps that we believed were waived as part of the catastrophic health declaration we were under.”
Geiger said those mistakes represented “a small percentage of overall dollars” that were reimbursed to agencies and organizations.
“Even though the report contains factual errors, the SAI audits find fault with less than 2 percent of the total dollars deployed by the procedures we executed,” Geiger said. “In other words, our company performed the duties for which we were hired and got better than 98 percent of the reimbursement efforts correct in the middle of a global health pandemic.”
Wow! They got 98% of the job done right?! I should hire Jill's firm to edit and proofread my articles!
Although 98% may make a Six Sigma Project Manager frown – can you imagine if only 98% of airplanes landed without any error? – it’s outstanding for Oklahoma government. Let's be honest – we’re basically the Sex Panther cologne of states doing the job right.
The only drawback to getting 98% of things done right is it may make it harder for Jill's firm to secure another lucrative no-bid state contract during a time of crisis. As we know, the last thing Kevin Stitt wants is for our state government to run effectively.
Anyway, I wish Jill the best of luck as she deals with this scandal. I hope she, or her firm, didn’t do anything too stupid or wrong, and that she doesn't kick me in the nuts when / if I run into her at another Big Lebowski party.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised
