On State Senators No Longer Tagging the Agent

If tonight you fall out of your bed, it is because the Oklahoma earth is quaking from the potential end of tax agency patronage.

Today the State Senate voted overwhelmingly to stop the practice of state senators recommending the heads of tag agencies.

The task to return professionalism back to the appointment and management of tag agencies took yet another huge step on Thursday with wide bipartisan approval from the Senate.

Coffee’s Senate Bill 888 ends the Senate’s tag agency patronage system by prohibiting lawmakers from recommending tag agents to the Oklahoma Tax Commission (OTC). In the past, Oklahoma State Senators have suggested to the OTC those individuals they thought should hold the position of tag agent. Under Coffee’s legislation, the Oklahoma Tax Commission will directly appoint tag agents.

I'm not sure where the writer of this story got the idea that this vote was a return to professionalism because, with the exception of Tulsa and Oklahoma counties, the other 75 have never been out from under the patronage system.

I also don't know whether the result will be better or worse for state residents, but it cleans up the image somewhat.

In the old days the system was played so closely to the vest that there often was only one tag agency per county. You went to the county seat for your tags, your title transfers, your drivers' licenses. You did your business with Ol' Tom (or Fred, or Wilma) and his/her family members because they were thicker than thieves with Senator Spudnutz, a good ol' boy his self elected since the Depression, and his daddy a'fore him.

I didn't much care to go into the county seat, and it usually meant a long line, but I never thought I was wrongly treated by anyone at a patronage agency.

It wasn't until I moved to Tulsa County that I got to experience the "improved" version; also patronage but there were more of them. That changed a few years ago so that you can go to just about any Tulsa County community and get your license test, your tags changed, or whatever else.

Truth is, I suspect the patronage system became more of a burden on state senators than it was an asset. Besides, there are so many more lucrative ways to make extra money these days if you are clever and crooked.