Despite months of public drama about fiscal chaos at the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, the agency is declining to release four new reports about internal audits and inspections approved by its governing board June 26.
New Commissioner of Mental Health Greg Slavonic was absent from Thursday’s board meeting, his first since being appointed to lead the agency earlier this month. The Oklahoma Legislature removed his predecessor, Allie Friesen, from the position May 30. One year into her tenure, Friesen’s administration realized the agency faced a major financial shortfall in late February, the result of repeatedly having paid a prior year’s Medicaid reimbursements with the subsequent year’s state appropriations. However, a series of rash decisions and discombobulated communications led lawmakers to believe Friesen was not the proper captain for the struggling ship.
Ultimately, the Legislature adjourned without resolution to the situation, approving a $27.4 million supplemental appropriation to avoid payroll interruptions in Fiscal Year 2025, which ends today. Lawmakers delayed decisions about full FY 2026 appropriations until next February amid a half-dozen ongoing reviews and following Friesen’s testimony that accused former department officials of “abuse, negligence and likely corruption.”
More than two dozen agency employees and stakeholders attended the June 26 meeting of the ODMHSAS Board, which remains responsible for some oversight processes despite the Legislature’s 2019 decision granting Gov. Kevin Stitt authority to hire the agency’s commissioner.
Thursday’s meeting marked the first as chairman for Hamel Reinmiller, a petroleum company executive appointed in March 2024 and elected to lead the board at its March 2025 meeting. Then-Chairwoman Shannon O’Doherty, who had served on the board for five years, attributed her resignation to “other professional commitments.”
During Thursday’s meeting, the board voted to “reestablish the internal audit for the department,” and members unanimously approved seven reports about ODMHSAS’ operations:
- “The report from the Corporate Accountability Committee concerning department auditor’s report, investigations, consumer complaints and legal matters”;
- “The internal audit report”;
- “The advocate general’s report”;
- “The inspector general’s report”;
- “The legal report”;
- “The report from the Performance Improvement Committee”; and
- “The critical incidents report.”
Each report’s corresponding item on the agenda listed an authorized speaker and the possibility of entering executive session. However, the board did not go into executive session for any of those seven items, and only board member Craig Henderson spoke about the topics. The mayor of Sapulpa and the long-time clinical director for Youth Services of Tulsa, Henderson was identified as leading “the Corporate Accountability Subcommittee” that reviewed the reports during a June 18 meeting.
“[ODMHSAS auditor Misty Capps] presented the internal audit report and updated the committee on the status of ongoing audits being conducted by the division. There were a few questions regarding the internal auditor’s report that Ms. Capps addressed,” Henderson said. “She is present and may answer any questions regarding the report.”
Reinmiller quipped: “Which is voluminous.”
The board approved each of the reports with no questions and little discussion. NonDoc submitted formal requests for five of the reports — the internal audit report, the advocate general’s report, the inspector general’s report, the legal report and the report from the Performance Improvement Committee — but ODMHSAS officials responded by denying the entire request.
“Unfortunately, I cannot provide you with the reports you requested as they are not subject to public disclosure. They contain confidential and/or protected information,” wrote ODMHSAS communications coordinator Maria Chaverri.
Asked to identify the agency’s legal authority to deny the requests under the Oklahoma Open Records Act, Chaverri initially responded with a slate of state and federal statutes:
- Open Meeting Act
Title 25, Section 307(B)(4)
Title 25, Section 307(B)(7) - Open Records Act
Title 51, Section 24A.7(A)(1)
Title 51, Section 24A.5(1)(a)–(b)
Title 51, Section 24A.12 - Mental Health
Title 43A, Section 1-109
Title 43A, Section 2-109 - Federal Rules
45 C.F.R. Parts 160 & 164 related to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
42 C.F.R. Part 2 related to alcohol and drug abuse patient records.
Asked to specify which sections of law were being cited to deny the release of each individual report, ODMHSAS first assistant general counsel Andrea Golden-Muse responded by releasing the Performance Improvement Committee report while again denying the release of the other four reports. She cited the same nine legal authorities for the denial, without specifying their application.
“This is the only document ODMHSAS is authorized to release under applicable state and federal laws,” Golden-Muse said. “The other items requested cannot be provided because they contain protected health information (PHI), which is protected under HIPAA and Title 43A, or are excluded under the Open Meeting Act and Open Records Act.”
Moments after the June 26 board meeting concluded, Golden-Muse attempted to block NonDoc from asking Henderson questions about the reports approved by the board.
“We can’t talk about any of it outside of a board meeting that has already been adjourned. Any board business that occurred can no longer be discussed at this time,” Golden-Muse said, referencing “the Open Meetings Act” when asked for a statutory citation for her claim. “They can talk about general things, but the things discussed specifically today we cannot discuss outside of a board meeting.”
After acknowledging the reports were approved in open session and that the board did not enter executive session to discuss them, Golden-Muse relented.
“Sure, ask about those if that’s what you want to do,” she said. “I don’t recommend it.”
Asked if there was anything he could say about the approved reports or the issues being monitored at the agency, Henderson replied, “Not at this moment.”
NonDoc asked Chaverri for whatever comment Slavonic would want to make about the reports approved Thursday or the agency’s situation as a whole.
“Interim Commissioner Slavonic was in Tulsa on consent decree business on his 14th day at ODMHSAS,” Chaverri said in response. “He is currently prioritizing structural improvements at the agency, stabilizing the financial budget, and ensuring the protection of core services for Oklahomans.”
Consultant: ‘No criminal actions by the finance department’
As he left Thursday’s meeting, Reinmiller agreed to discuss the status of issues at ODMHSAS, where he said “some really great people working really hard to stabilize the ship.”
“I can’t talk about the details of those subcommittee reports, but I can tell you that the inspector general, the legal department and the audit team work hard to go through a voluminous amount of information and report that, and that’s a process that we’ve been improving and working with the Legislature to do so,” Reinmiller said. “We’ve got to fix some fiscal issues, but nobody is turning their back on the mental health need in this state. It’s prolific, and we need more people bailing water. We need more qualified, competent, high-character mental health-focused people in the state, because we’ve got a lot of folks that are struggling.”
Reinmiller said he did not want to speak for Slavonic, but he said the retired U.S. Navy rear admiral “is trying to reestablish” relationship at the State Capitol to “deliver on an improved [ODMHSAS] and leave a more stable organization than he came into as interim commissioner.”
“I think this agency is and has been in a state of reestablishing processes and fiscal discipline for a few years, and I think Commissioner Friesen started that,” Reinmiller said. “She started asking very tough questions, and she uncovered some fiscal discipline issues — process issues — and that work is ongoing.”
To that end, board members heard an update on fiscal matters from Cathy Menefee, a long-time state government employee who now runs a consulting group with a mission to “build better government.” (When Slavonic served as interim director for the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs in 2023, he also contracted with Menefee to review that agency’s finances.)
“I can’t tell you everything that’s happened since March, but I’m on Day 12, and I’d love to share that with you,” Menefee told board members.
Menefee said she has reviewed reports from the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency and the State Auditor and Inspector’s Office, and she said she intends to sit down soon with certified financial planner David Greenwell, whom Stitt hired to investigate the agency’s financial practices.
“Thank you for all your hard work,” Reinmiller told Menefee. “It’s a lot.”
Speaking to the ODMHSAS Board, Menefee offered the meeting’s most transparent remarks, noting that State Auditor Cindy Byrd’s office has been working in conjunction with the criminal division of Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office to review the agency. While Byrd’s “Part 1” findings reported poor practices, Menefee told the board that Drummond’s office found no criminal activity within Byrd’s initial review of ODMHSAS.
“I know there were a lot of words that were used about inappropriate things, as far as finance goes. There’s no criminal actions by the finance department. So I just want to rest assured, we definitely are missing some processes, but there’s nothing nefarious,” Menefee said during the meeting. “That team is working really hard, and it is a small team that remains, and they’re doing a lot of stuff, a lot more than is normally asked at the end of a fiscal year for a finance team. So if you see those people, you should high five them twice.”
Phil Bacharach, director of communications for the attorney general’s office, declined to comment on whether Drummond’s team had, in fact, made a determination about criminal culpability regarding the ODMHSAS financial saga. But Menefee said after Thursday’s meeting that Drummond — who publicly called for Friesen’s termination during the legislative session — relayed the findings himself during a meeting at his office.
“Attorney General Drummond told the commissioner, myself and a couple other people in a meeting that there was no criminal activity (in the auditor’s initial report),” Menefee said. “That finance staff has heard a lot of stuff, and they’re pretty demoralized, and there’s just a few people left, so I want everybody to hear (that).”
Menefee said the agency’s financial department is “really looking to staff up.” The state of Oklahoma’s job postings page lists several accounting roles open at the department, including a posting issued Thursday for chief financial officer.
Payments made
In a resolution to one financial issue revealed this year, ODMHSAS “is current on all Medicaid service payments,” according to Christina Foss, the state Medicaid director at the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.
“We want to have a CPA. We want somebody with five years of state experience. Those things are all really hard to find, and so we are looking,” Menefee said of the CFO search. “If anybody knows anybody fabulous, you send them our way.”
While the CFO search is ongoing, so is an effort to “reestablish” ODMHSAS’ internal audit office, which received board approval Thursday following an executive session. Before the board voted to enter executive session, however, Reinmiller briefly recognized Capps to begin a presentation. Capps, who has been with agency about six years, said she would “make the case for building a better internal audit division, particularly an independent internal audit division.”
But Jessica Lewallen, the executive assistant for both the board and the commissioner, told Reinmiller that Capps’ presentation was supposed to be private. While the board quickly voted to enter executive session, screens in the room briefly revealed a slideshow titled, “Current internal audit division must change,” above the word, “Why?” on a clipart chalkboard.
After the meeting, Reinmiller addressed the vote to “reestablish” the internal audit process, although he was unsure whether it had formally been eliminated at some point in the past.
“We’ve obviously got more meetings to have on that to get the charter and other elements in place. What we’re trying to create is an audit department that is focused on all the right things and is empowered to have independence — is empowered to effect change,” Reinmiller said. “It was never formally undone, but I think it needs to be reestablished with teeth and independence.”
Consent decree: ‘Most of the June 8 deadlines have not been met’
For those following mental health care in Oklahoma, Thursday revealed other tidbits of note.
In May, the Oklahoma Legislature authorized ODMHSAS to purchase a former St. Anthony building in southwest Oklahoma City to increase the metro area’s in-patient bed capacity after cost changes and funding concerns stalled the proposed Donahue Hospital project. During Thursday’s board meeting, ODMHSAS chief of operations Chad Carden told board members a temporary lease should be signed this week while the Vatican conducts an internal review of the sale over the next “four to six months.”
With Slavonic in Tulsa “on consent decree business” Thursday, stakeholders continue to watch how the state of Oklahoma’s new agreement to settle a class-action lawsuit about competency restoration services will unfold. Earlier this year, the Legislature approved a consent decree that prescribes speed and process improvements for how ODMHSAS provides competency restoration services to pre-trial criminal defendants deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. The lawsuit alleges that Oklahoma has violated those individuals’ rights by not providing care in a timely manner, such as in the case of Edmond resident Ross Norwood, who remains in the Oklahoma County Jail seven months after being deemed incompetent to stand trial for lighting his house on fire during a psychotic episode.
On June 8, the three consultants tasked with overseeing compliance with terms of the consent decree issued a report (embedded below) saying “progress in complying with the decree’s provisions has been slow.”
ODMHSAS faced eight initial deadlines on June 8, but the consultants wrote that “it is clear that most of the June 8 deadlines have not been met and it is questionable whether ODMHSAS has met the ‘best efforts’ standard governing compliance with the decree.”
“Until this week, we have had great difficulty establishing the precise number of class members in custody awaiting restoration services,” the consultants wrote. “We have received documents with conflicting information, with numbers ranging from 140-265. Some of the difficulty appears to stem from ODMHSAS’s appropriate decision to transfer data tracking regarding people in the forensic system from the Oklahoma Forensic Center to the central office, and from the need to reconcile and integrate multiple data systems. However, this process has taken longer than it should have.”
On June 10, Drummond wrote to Slavonic about the consequences of not complying with the consent decree’s deadlines.
“Given your recent appointment, my team suggested to class counsel and the consultants that you be allowed the opportunity to comply with the terms of the decree before either party took any action. Any failure to promptly address the ongoing issues within [ODMHSAS], however, will likely result in the agency incurring significant sanctions and penalties,” Drummond wrote. “Additionally, the information that [ODMHSAS] has provided to the consultants thus far has been incomplete and inaccurate, which undermines the objectives of the decree. The agency must commit to a concerted effort to provide comprehensive and reliable data for a systematic reformation to be realized. Otherwise, the consequences of [ODMHSAS’] delayed restoration services will continue to compound to the detriment of the class (members) and [agency].”
Meanwhile, also on Thursday, Stitt welcomed U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the State Capitol. Asked the most important thing that could be done for mental health care in America, Kennedy said the topic is “among our greatest priorities,” and he spoke in favor of funding for federal health programs currently in jeopardy.
“Mental health care — and particularly the issues with addiction and the epidemic that we are having now in suicide — is among our greatest priorities at HHS,” Kennedy said. “We fund services for Medicaid and Medicare through [the Health Resource Services Administration], and we’re going to continue to fund those services robustly, and we’re focusing also on assisting the states [for] becoming laboratories for how to treat these illnesses. I have to say, as I mentioned before, as part of the mental health crisis, there is more and more emerging science that shows how it’s directly connected to our food, and as we improve our food through initiatives like Gov. Stitt’s initiatives here, we are going to be doing part of the job of ending the mental health crisis in our country.”
Kennedy’s comments came after Stitt announced an executive order supporting the federal Cabinet secretary’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative. Elements of Stitt’s executive order include:
- requesting a federal HHS waiver to allow Oklahoma to prohibit the purchase of soda, candy and confectionary items with SNAP benefits;
- directing the State Department of Health to end its “recommendation” that fluoride be included in Oklahoma water systems, although local systems will still have final say on its inclusion;
- directing agencies that provide meals to Oklahomans to discontinue the use of artificial food dyes; and
- creating an advisory council to study issues and make additional recommendations about improving the health outcomes of Oklahomans.
The elimination of the fluoride recommendation drew criticism from the Oklahoma Dental Association.
“Adding fluoride to our public water supply is a safe and effective way to prevent tooth decay, strengthening teeth and improving oral health,” said Dr. Twana Duncan, an Antlers dentist currently serving as the group’s president. “By simply drinking fluoridated water, Oklahomans are doing something good for their oral health. Our communities should not be forced to shut down a public health program that has provided so much benefit to so many Oklahomans.”
(Clarification: This article was updated at 12:55 p.m. Tuesday, July 1, to clarify comment Cathy Menefee made regarding “Part 1” of the state auditor and inspector’s review.)
Read the Performance Improvement Committee report
Read the June 8 consent decree report
