Coronavirus in Oklahoma: Former health commissioner kept on as special adviser

Forced out of the top job at the Oklahoma Health Department, former Commissioner Gary Cox remains on the state payroll as a special adviser.

Cox, 73, will serve in the new capacity until July 3 and make another $22,600, The Oklahoman has learned.

"I have great concern about that," Senate leader Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, said Monday.

Cox was commissioner only eight months. He had to step down by law last month when the state Senate adjourned without confirming him. Thompson, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said, "I will be looking into it a little bit deeper and see why we're creating a new position at the Health Department."

Gov. Kevin Stitt on May 22 named an Oklahoma Air National Guard surgeon, Col. Lance Frye, to serve as interim commissioner. The same day, the state's chief operating officer, John Budd, directed a change in Cox's title to "special advisor."

"Given that we remain in a pandemic (and in fact under a Catastrophic Health Emergency), the Governor believes it is important to provide Interim Commissioner Frye all the support he needs in this transition period so we continue to protect the lives and health of Oklahomans," Budd wrote in an email.

"Special Advisor Cox will remain in that capacity for six weeks ... to help with the transition."

The opposition to Cox's confirmation last month was so widespread in the Senate that it wasn't even scheduled for a committee hearing.

Senators said they had concerns because Cox did not meet the legal requirements for the job. They said they also had concerns after the attorney general asked for an investigative audit of the Health Department and after hearing complaints from employees there.

"You just kind of pile all that together and it became really, really hard to confirm him,” Sen. Greg McCortney, chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, said last month.

As a special adviser, Cox is "providing consultation on the agency’s operations that involve roughly 1,500 employees and a $430 million budget as well as the agency’s programs developed specific to COVID-19 response," the Health Department said Monday.

His salary as commissioner was $196,000 per year. "We did not change his salary for the six-week advisory period," the Health Department said.

The governor's office Monday defended the decision.

"It is common in the Stitt administration, as in many well-run organizations, to temporarily keep departing high-level employees as advisers during leadership changes," spokesman Charlie Hannema said.

"Gary Cox’s leadership with the Governor’s Solution Task Force played a key role in Oklahoma’s strong and successful response to an unprecedented pandemic. Making an abrupt transition while still managing the impacts of COVID-19 is not in the best interest of Oklahomans.”

Also Monday, the Health Department announced it can no longer by law provide details about COVID-19 cases by city, ZIP code and nursing home/long-term care facility because the state’s catastrophic emergency declaration has expired.

The declaration had allowed the governor to suspend laws restricting the release of such information.