There’s lots of news from the front in the war between Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett and the Tulsa City Council, so let’s get right to it.

First off, Tulsa City Councilors have lobbed an “ethics bomb” at the Mayor, questioning whether Mayor Bartlett has committed an ethics violation by accepting free, personal legal services from a city contractor.

That contractor would be Bartlett’s personal attorney Joel Wohlgemuth, who continues to represent the city in other cases, and has billed the city for nearly $1 million over the past few years.

Reportedly, Wohlgemuth is representing the mayor without cost in a lawsuit against the City Councilors, while he represents the city in a variety of cases as outside counsel.

Tulsa business owner Jim Rice is spear-heading watchdog group “Citizens For a Better Government” and has reportedly filed an ethics complaint against Wohlgemuth with the state bar association over his free representation of Bartlett.

This while at least one Tulsa City Councilor, GT Bynum wants to “bury the hatchet”, well sorta. He’s supposedly argued for a delay in voting on an ethics inquiry.

Reportedly, Bynum also sent a letter to the mayor asking for more information about possible mediation and asking his fellow councilors to consider it as well.

While it appears that at least some Councilors may be open to mediation, others say they are not interested in mediating under the Mayor’s “bullying” tactics” and under his terms.


The Councilors also indicated that the potential for the mayor and Chief of Staff Terry Simonson to face misdemeanor charges for allegedly lying to the council about a federal police grant is not an issue for mediation.

And while the Tulsa City Councilors were at it, they slapped a vote of no confidence on Tulsa’s grants administrator, Dafne Pharis. Eight of the nine councilors voted no confidence in Pharis for what the Council referred to as poorly managing Community Development Block Grants. Mayor Dewey Bartlett defended Dafne Pharis’ performance saying that Pharis has set the grants department on the right course for the future. The City Council’s vote of no confidence is basically a meaningless gesture.

And as is so often the case, the Council and Mayor are still at odds over spending. The City Council wants to know when the Mayor will spend the money it allocated over the Mayor’s veto and the Mayor keeps telling the Council he will spend the money when the time is right. By the way, the Mayor says the time will be right about September 1st to turn the street lights back on.

And if that wasn’t enough news from the war front, there just may be a lot more news, well, news and maybe a bit propaganda in store as…

Yep, you guessed it.

The Mayor has hired a press secretary.

The job of explaining not only the Mayor’s point of view but also what the Mayor actually meant to say falls on the shoulders of Lloyd Wright who says he plans to communicate and advocate for the mayor “in ways he can’t do for himself or doesn’t have time to do”.

Reportedly, Wright will receive an annual salary of $75,000 for being the Mayor’s press secretary and “explainer”.