Oklahoma County Commissioners vote to reinstate public comment virtually and in person

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Just minutes into Friday’s special Board of County Commissioners meeting, commissioners brought back public comment– both virtually and in person.

“As an elected official, I work for you. I work for the people. You all pay my salary. So, it is in my opinion it is the most respectful thing you can do to citizens– to listen to them,” said Carrie Blumert, Oklahoma County Commissioner District 1.

A high priority for Blumert.

“A lot of people have showed up at our meetings in the last few weeks, wanting to make public comment. We removed it from the agenda back in March because we didn’t know how to do virtual and in-person comment and now that we do know how to do that, it needs to come back on,” Blumert said.

Commissioner Kevin Calvey was noticeably absent from the vote. His Deputy Chief Myles Davidson sat in his place.

This comes just two days after Calvey and Commissioner Brian Maughn voted to allocate $34 million in CARES Act funding to the Jail Trust.

Calvey pushing through that vote after skipping the beginning of the meeting and jumped straight to that agenda item. All before Commissioner Carrie Blumert was even seated.

On Thursday night, the group Recall Calvey popped up on social media. Planning to get together the nearly 17,000 signatures needed to recall Commissioner Calvey– saying he’s unfit to serve.

“I was disgusted. As a man who commonly refers to his faith skipping through a prayer and the pledge of allegiance and to afterwards claim unequivocally false claims about that it was a normal meeting, that’s false,” said Hannah Royce, Recall Calvey. “My hope is that folks get to see that this has been going on for a long time.”

On Wednesday, Calvey told News 4 he had concerns over adding virtual comments.

“If you do virtual public comment, you could have 10,000 people wherever from China or Korea or wherever chime in to disrupt our meetings that way,” Calvey said.

But County Clerk David Hooten told News 4 they have been working on the logistics of how that virtual public comment would work.

“Ultimately today we voted to reinstate it, which I’m very happy about,” Blumert said.

We contacted Commissioner Calvey for comment around 10 am on Friday morning and have yet to hear back.

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