Remember there is a vote next week, but you can vote this week
Who do you want to lead Oklahoma in the most important roles in state government? Friendly reminder, since Oklahomans are dead last in voter turnout, you actually get to decide.
Early in-person voting: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, Oct. 28-30, and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31.
Bring your ID to vote at any of these locations on those dates: Tulsa County Election Board, 12000 E. Skelly Drive; Tulsa Tech Center, 4000 W. Florence in Broken Arrow; Chandler Park Community Center, 6500 W. 21st St.; and O’Brien Park Community Center, 6149 N. Lewis Ave.
Quotable quotes
On the mind of a Fortune 500 CEO
“If we could we would hire every one of those jobs right here, (but) the reality is that Oklahoma is not yet attracting the workforce of the future. The talent we need is not being adequately developed locally and is not choosing to move here. So we do what any growing company does. We hire and grow where the talent is and where the talent wants to be.”
– Chad Zamarin, the president of Williams Cos., in front of lawmakers at the state Capitol in a meeting organized by state Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa. Zamarin explained what would help the Fortune 500 company attract and retain talented employees. On his list? Improve education and workforce development, increase public safety, grow downtown districts and have better mental health care. Not on his list? Tax cuts. “We’re gonna say out loud at the Capitol today that we are not losing talent to Texas because they have a 0% income tax rate,” Zamarin said.
Read the Tulsa World’s Steve Metzer’s story and The Oklahoman’s opinion editor William C. Wertz offers his take on what the CEO had to say.
On a tragedy
“I told him, ‘You cannot ride a motorcycle 100 miles an hour down 71st Street near Yale.’ I said, ‘You can’t do that.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that. You cannot be an idiot. Did you hear me?’ ‘Yes, Dad, yes.’ A week later, he runs into the side of a van at 100 miles an hour on that street.”
– Travis Meyer, News on 6 chief meteorologist, about the death last year of his 23-year-old son Ashton. Meyer hasn’t done a lot of in-depth interviews in his long career, but he sat down on The Brooks Show and talked about a lot of topics.
On what comes next
“Go as far as you can see, and when you get there, you’ll be able to see farther. You don’t need to know the answer to every question that you have. You just need to figure out as far as you can see, make the decisions that are the best decisions, and when you get there, you’ll be able to see more.”
– Ina Garten quoting a line attributed to J.P. Morgan, about the power of reinvention and how she has switched things up throughout her career. She went from working for a U.S. president on the nuclear energy budget to a food store owner in the Hamptons to a cookbook author to a TV star and now a podcaster.
On the family tree
“We’ve solved several cases, but we work in the shadows, and so we don’t tell anyone, and we keep privacy very serious for the people that hire us to do this work, and so we just keep quiet. But here is an opportunity for people to realize, ‘Oh, wait a minute, we didn’t know OSU was doing this, and they’re doing a good job.’”
– Dr. Jason Beaman, chair of the School of Forensic Sciences at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, talking about the recent case that made national news where the department identified a man whose body was found in a barrel that surfaced from a Nevada lake. They only had a bone segment but used genealogy profiling. The Tulsa World’s Ashton Slaughter has the details.
On overcoming infidelity
“For a brief time, he went to the gym without contacts or glasses, intentionally blurring his vision to reduce the risk of temptation.”
– Reporting by the Wall Street Journal’s Ashley Wong on former Tulsan and former Hillsong Church pastor Carl Lentz, in this unlocked story about a new book “Overcoming Infidelity” that he wrote with his wife, Laura Lentz. The pastor and his family moved to Tulsa to join Transformation Church after he was fired for “moral failures.”
Notable numbers
8,000 versus 18,000
– The number of police officers in Los Angeles compared to Berlin. Both have 3.9 million people living there. In this interview on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard, best-selling author, journalist and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell discusses these numbers in his new book “The American Way of Killing: An Invention of an Epidemic.” Gladwell’s point is that some places spend more money on police than prison. In America, we spend more on prison than police.
37%
– The percentage that the average time served in the Oklahoma corrections system has increased since 2016. Ellen Spolar of the Crime and Justice Institute told lawmakers that at the current pace Oklahoma’s prisons will be filled within a year, according to a story by the Tulsa World’s Randy Krehbiel.
$60 million
– The estimated cost of The Norris, 10 buildings being built at 87th Street and Mingo Road that will result in 306 new apartments.
$25 billion
– The amount Meta is ordered by a New Mexico judge to pay for deceiving users about its data privacy practices, one of the largest penalties levied so far against a technology company. A jury ruled that Meta had committed 43 million violations of the state’s consumer protection laws. Each violation was up to $5,000. For those scoring at home, New Mexico has won about $943 million in judgments from Meta before this one. That’s on top of the $17 billion in settlements Meta has to pay to 47 states. Read more in this unlocked New York Times story by Eli Tan and Cecilia Kang.
Remember, there is no cavalry. It’s up to us. All together now. jc
P.S. After my chat with OSU President Jim Hess made news, I hope OU Tulsa’s leader will do the same.
I will sit down with University of Oklahoma Tulsa Vice President Susan Carlson Bynum on Friday, Nov. 13, at a Tulsa Press Club event.
This series of Page One conversations is designed to give the public an opportunity to hear directly from the leaders shaping higher education in Tulsa. This is a fundraiser for the Tulsa Press Club, which is focused on building an engaged community through the pursuit and support of ethical journalism.
Doors open at 11 a.m. Lunch starts at 11:30 a.m.
The discussion with Bynum will begin at noon and end at 1 p.m.
The Collington Index is a free weekly news summary written by Jason Collington that explains quickly what’s important and interesting, shared in weekly wraps, popular lists, conversations and cheat sheets. Skim or go deep. A movement toward truth and understanding in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Subscribe for free on Substack to get an email newsletter each Tuesday morning. See the archive at collingtonindex.com.
