By Mike W. Ray
Southwest Ledger
LAWTON – The Comanche County budget that Commissioner Ryan John proposed was rejected by the Excise Board after a blistering critique from long-time Chairman J.P. Richard.
John, a farmer who received the oath of office as the new District 1Commissioner one year ago this month, submitted an “estimate of needs” that was endorsed Sept. 22 by District 2 Commissioner Johnny Owens and Eddie Clark, John’s first deputy who was acting on behalf of the absent commissioner.
Two hours later, when the county Excise Board convened, Richard wasted no time in announcing emphatically, “This is an abomination of a budget, I totally disagree with how this has come about, and I will not sign my name” to the document.
Richard – who has served on the Excise Board for 21 years, 18 of those as the chairman, and who was a successful Lawton businessman for 46 years – along with fellow Excise Board member Dustin Glover, voted to reject the county commissioners’ proposed budget.
The third member of the Excise Board, Brent Easton of Lawton, who was nominated by state Sen. Spencer Kern (R-Duncan) to fill a vacancy on the panel created when A.C. Bennett resigned, had not been confirmed by the Oklahoma Tax Commission as of Sept. 23.
A special meeting of the Excise Board is scheduled for 11 a.m. next Monday, Sept. 29, to revisit the county budget.
Timing is critical because every week the budget is delayed is another week in which County Treasurer Rhonda Brantley and her staff cannot send out approximately 52,000 property tax statements. It takes three to five days to print those statements, insert them into envelopes to which postage must be affixed, and mail them – which usually occurs during the second week in November, she said.
The conflict among Richard, Commissioners John and Owens and District 3 Commissioner Josh Powers, centers on the inmate population at the Comanche County Detention Center.
For the last 19 years, if not longer, the CCDC head count has exceeded permissible limits.
Previously the State Health Department authorized a maximum of 283 inmates to be incarcerated in the jail, but the detention center routinely exceeded that threshold. More recently, the State Fire Marshal set the CCDC maximum permissible inmate count at 240 and imposed a total “load capacity” of 283, which includes inmates and staff, jail Administrator David Weber said.
The detention center held 195 inmates on Sept. 11, and 131 others were housed in jails in other counties with whom Comanche County contracts, for a total head count of 326, Weber informed the county commissioners.
The fewest number of CCDC inmates “in the last five years was 291,” John said. “We’re far off 240.”
Consequently, Comanche County is “outsourcing” dozens of inmates to other counties – and the cost isn’t cheap. Okmulgee County, for example, reportedly charges Comanche County $66 per day for each inmate.
The Comanche County inmate head count Sept. 22 was 334, of whom 203 were incarcerated in the CCDC and 131 others were housed in other county jails: 59 in Okmulgee County, 64 in Washita County, six in Grady County, and two in Greer County, Weber said.
Referring to “the predicament we’re in,” John estimated on Sept. 11 that Comanche County will spend approximately $2.6 million in Fiscal Year 2025-26 to outsource inmates to other county jails. The county’s “cash burn rate” for “offsite inmate housing” is more than $200,000 per month, he said.
Commissioner John also referred to “a health problem” in the CCDC. “More than half of our inmates have mental health issues,” he said.
Last year approximately $400,000 of the CCDC’s expenditures were financed from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds, but that money has been depleted. The CCDC needs “either support from the taxpayers” or “we will have to cut the county budget” by $1.2 million, John said. “We have one year to figure this out.”
Powers recommends
long-term solution,
not short-term fix
Powers said county officials should concentrate on developing a long-term solution to the high number of CCDC inmates. “Instead of wasting our time worrying about the temporary fix, we need to be more focused on a permanent solution.”
“We were looking at this problem five years ago,” Richard recalled. Offsite inmate housing “was going to catch up with us eventually.”
“You want to take $400,000 to $500,000 from county officials and employees, and put it toward the county jail,” Richard said of John’s proposed county budget. “Doing that would reduce public services to Comanche County taxpayers. Instead, we should be looking for a long-term solution.”
Richard also accused Owens, the Central District commissioner, of “neglecting the jail.” Southwest Ledger left a message with Owens’ office, asking whether he wanted to respond to the charge, but Owens never replied.
Comanche County’s per-capita tax base “is lower than most counties,” Richard said. “That’s because Comanche County has a lot of Indian land and government land.”
The county should get through FY 2025-26 in reasonably good shape, Richard said, but next year will be much worse because of significant losses of taxable property.
Sizable losses of
taxable property
GEO’s private prison east of Lawton has been purchased by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. The prison is valued at $67,882,272 and GEO paid $859,975 in ad valorem taxes on the 2,682-bed institution, according to County Assessor Grant Edwards. That will have a significant effect on the Geronimo school district, he said.
What’s more, Comanche County may have lost the last seven months of ad valorem taxes that are still due. Those taxes were not paid at the time of the prison’s sale on July 22, 2025, nor when the deed was filed three days later, said Robbie Traughber, the assessor’s chief commercial appraiser.
Besides the prison, Southwestern Medical Center, a privately owned facility, will be bought by Comanche County Memorial Hospital, a non-taxable public institution. The acquisition will be financed with up to $55 million that will be borrowed from a bank, attorney John Zelbst of the CCMH governing board told Southwest Ledger.
CCMH has cash in the bank and inherits no debt from SWMC, the Ledger was told.
SWMC is owned by Scion Health of Louisville, Kentucky, which is owned by Apollo Global Management, an American private equity firm based in New York City that reportedly has $840 billion of assets under management.
The owners of SWMC paid $566,164 in property taxes on the hospital at 5602 Southwest Lee Boulevard in Lawton, and on its mental health clinic and other facilities, according to Traughber.
In addition, Great Plains Technology Center paid $4 million for a building at 6501 West Gore Boulevard that was owned by a California family and formerly housed a call enter. Last year that building was valued at $6,857,834 and its owners paid $75,293 in property taxes on it.
Combined, that’s a $1.5 million loss of ad valorem taxes to the county.
And that doesn’t include the 5,237 military veterans in Comanche County who receive a 100% property tax exemption authorized by the Oklahoma Legislature because they have permanent total disabilities. That tax bite came to an estimated $12.2 million as of June 30, 2025, and collectively $86.19 million from 2006 through 2024, county assessor records show.
The Oklahoma Tax Commission reimburses Comanche County for only 12.5% of those exemptions, Edwards said. Last year that came to $1,819,427, which was disbursed to Lawton, Elgin, Cache, Bishop, Flower Mound, Fletcher, Geronimo, Chattanooga, Sterling, and Indiahoma public schools, records reflect.