Oklahoma City:
Oklahoma City Politics and Policy System
Our reader will hopefully remember our Chapter 10 tale concerning an economic developer with a lake named after him: Stanley Draper. Before picking up his postwar story, a word or two on him is required. Stanley Draper, in my book, qualifies for the title “Robert Moses of the West”—not because he embraced urban renewal (he did in the sixties) but as in “power-broker” because of his outsized role as head of the Oklahoma City Chamber from which he dominated the politics/economic development of the city, if not the state. In my mind, Draper exerted power that Moses only dreamt of. An issue, more important to our history, is whether the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce under Draper is recasting the old traditional chamber-style economic development we have presented thus far? The reader might remind herself to remember this question at the conclusion of our Oklahoma City comments.
Draper pursued a multi-decade highway program using his own chamber planning department (which dwarfed that of Oklahoma City, if not the state). His concern was to keep the various federal airports/installations secure by ensuring their access from all directions. By the late 1960’s the chamber had initiated five major highway projects, and played a major role in the eminent domain for each. Like ancient Rome, Oklahoma City needed water from afar; Draper’s reservoir system, capped by Lake Draper, and a series of pumping stations ensured Oklahoma City access for water to support its growth until the 1980’s. Please remember: this is all under Chamber of Commerce leadership.
Without any doubt, Draper’s most incredible economic development achievement was the chamber’s creation (1945) and subsequent use of the profit-making, Oklahoma Industries Inc. Started originally to construct and then lease a department store’s warehouse, Oklahoma Industries went on to repeat the process for decades. “Purchasing the land secretly, allegedly to avoid price inflation, [Oklahoma Industries] handled over 350 commercial and industrial projects between 1954 and 1964 … [including] Western Electric and General Electric branch plants”[1].
Taking advantage of changes in Oklahoma state law which permit public development trusts to raise funds without voter approval, Oklahoma Industries created a slew of non-profit subsidiaries, operating loosely under county commissioners, which issued low-interest IDBs (remember the Oklahoma model of IDB), tax-exempt bonds to bankers and investors whose proceeds purchased valuable commercial property which were then leased or sold—with the proceeds paying back the bondholders. By leaving the property in ownership of the Oklahoma Industry non-profit subsidiary, the users paid no sales or property tax. One subsidiary, the Oklahoma Industrial and Cultural Facilities Trust financed construction of a major industrial concern and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Another trust, the Oklahoma Industries Authority between 1966 and 1982 floated $250 million in bonds to users such as General Motors, Firestone, Dayton Tire, Lear-Siegler, and Hertz-Rent-a-Car.[2]
Although an estimated 12% of Oklahoma City’s total employment in 1981 was in facilities owned ultimately by Oklahoma Industries, there were no serious challenges to this financial empire until 1978. In that year the Oklahoma Supreme Court took away their property exemption right and sales tax exemptions to industrial equipment. The court also opened up the hitherto secret financial records of Oklahoma Industries and then the newspapers took over. A series of investigations, exposed widespread and “high up” conflicts of interest, prompting push-back and eventual electoral challenge to the state Attorney General Cartwright who led the attack against Oklahoma Industries. Cartwright lost his election in 1982. Many of the Oklahoma Industries subsidiaries, including the Industrial and Cultural Facilities Trust, continue in operation at the time of this writing[3].
But we are not yet through with Draper. Draper’s chamber masterminded and implemented Oklahoma City’s massive annexation program. Between 1950 and 1960 Oklahoma City grew to include 80 square miles, a decade’s increase of about 40 percent. By 1962, two years later, Oklahoma grew to include 430 square miles—and by 1963, 641.5 square miles—a four year growth rate of 700 percent. For a brief time in the 1960’s, Oklahoma City was the nation’s biggest city in land area, nearly three times the size of Chicago[4].
“The Chamber planned, financed and executed the entire annexation drive. The city council played no role in the process except that of voting to add the properties that the chamber designated”. At its inception, Draper was again concerned for the future of Oklahoma City’s military installations, then to preserve/enhance the city’s tax base, and to avoid become entrapped as Northeastern cities were. Eventually, Oklahoma City annexed so much it threatened Norman and Edmond, both sizeable third tier cities—they pushed back, by annexing their surrounding land and survived Draper. One community, El Reno (population 2010, 16,000) had to annex so much that today it is larger than Boston and St. Louis—combined[5]. All this was accomplished by the chamber’s planning department “which plotted the annexation parcel by parcel … rounded up petition signatures, [and] purchased land”.[6] Don’t mess with this chamber! No surprise then that Oklahoma City grew by a third during the 1950’s and another 13 percent in the sixties—to 368,000 in 1970. One interesting question that follows from this aggressive annexation program is whether Oklahoma City has any suburbs left? It does; but that will be dealt with in another section below.
Oklahoma City Urban Renewal
Wrapping up our snapshot of Oklahoma City’s postwar to pre-Great Society economic development policy system, it must be mentioned that school desegregation in light of the 1954 Brown decision did not go smoothly by any means, but Oklahoma, responding much as Atlanta businessmen had, urged racial moderation so as not to threaten the city’s economic and population growth. In 1962, citizens, mostly middle class, professionals and businesspeople, formed the Association for Responsible Government and recruited 5,000 members. The Association, not really representative of the Good Government reform associations prevalent in western postwar cities, was certainly Oklahoma City’s delayed variant. As one might expect, Draper was not a member. In 1963, these reformers took over the City Council—just in time to deal with Draper’s newest initiative, urban renewal and control over the city’s newly established Urban Renewal Authority (which shall be discussed in a below section).
The Oklahoma City Chamber challenges our traditional model of chamber-style economic development. Likely, the Oklahoma City Chamber, in this period at least, may be the most powerful chamber in the nation—in large measure because it plays such a huge role in shaping and implementing traditional governmental functions. In any case, Draper, the consummate empire-builder, will eventually retire with community honors; his name, however, is not mentioned in the Chamber’s present day history.
Returning to Oklahoma City’s wild west Chamber headed by Stanley Draper a key member of the city’s vault-like closed business cabal is sure to perk up the interest of our tired readers. True to form, Draper had his eye on this eastern urban renewal thing, and earmarked it as a possible source of funds for an increasing deteriorated and declining downtown. Back in 1948, Oklahoma City downtown retail businesses had garnered a whopping 75% of the metro area retail sales; by 1965 it was down to 11% and seventy-seven downtown businesses closed their doors. So as early as 1957, Draper had sent a delegation to Pittsburgh to study the Golden Triangle project. The delegation apparently liked what they saw in Pittsburgh, and Draper spent the next two years securing state passage of urban renewal enabling legislation (1959).
The first steps (1961) were forming an urban renewal agency and stocking it with the proceeds of a $39 million dollar bond issue. Draper was successful in both, but the city council initially appointed several non-cabal board members to the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority (OCURA) which sparked a row between the council, Draper and the cabal. In 1962 however, citizens, mostly middle class professionals and middle managers formed a grassroots reform organization (the Association for Responsible Government, ARG) very similar to those founded a decade earlier in many western cities. They were concerned with inefficiency in government, corruption and needless to say they were not controlled by our old friend, the Chamber managing director, Stanley Draper or the other prestigious city elites of his cabal. The AVG field a number of candidates, won council elections and by late 1963-early 1964 secured a majority in the city council.
For the next several years the AVG –dominated council, sometimes worked with Draper and Oklahoma City’s Vault-like business elite, sometimes not on rather controversial issues such as school desegregation, reapportionment which provided political muscle to suburbs, and even directly challenging Draper’s government facility-based economic development (the FAA in this instance). In regards to urban renewal, however, the AVG let Draper have its way with the OCURA board of directors. In 1967, E. K. Gaylord, the newspaper owner and cabal member, having enough of the “creeping socialism” of LBJ’s Great Society, attacked key members of the AVG political leadership on their alleged involvement in city contracts which would benefit from any urban renewal initiative which the city might pursue. Whatever its merits, the ensuring scuffle fragmented the AVG and voided much of its short-lived political impact. While of no consequence to the urban renewal program itself, urban renewal was a useful issue which the cabal could employ to regain relatively uncontested control over Oklahoma City politics.
While all this was going on, Oklahoma City urban renewal cranked into high gear. To provide working capital to OCURA, Draper’s chamber formed its own Urban Action Foundation which not only extended funds and extended credit to OCURA, but served as the Chamber’s monitor. The Chamber in 1966 installed its own general council as executive director of the Urban Renewal Authority. As required by federal urban renewal funds, the Oklahoma City plan, assembled by Pei & Associates in 1964. The plan encompassed a huge area and Oklahoma City urban renewal essentially demolished nearly the entirely of the City’s downtown and East Side. Its initial project application (1963) proposed to extend the University of Oklahoma’s Medical Center into the predominately black East Side neighborhood. Submitted during the last days of the Kennedy Administration, the proposal was finally approved by HUD in December 1967. Oklahoma City’s first urban renewal project began in 1968.
Oklahoma City downtown urban renewal lasted through most of the 1970’s (despite the 1974 CDBG formal termination of the urban renewal program). Thirty new or renovated downtown buildings were involved. “In effect, urban renewal completely leveled the core of the city to replace the old buildings with modern structures … OCURA funded buildings, streets, parks, heating systems and an underground walkway. By 1980, the Authority had spent some $500 million ($300 million downtown) including money for support services for relocated businesses (the nation’s first such program) and construction of 786 housing units … [resulting in] a nearly 500% increase in property values during the 1970’s”.[7] Make no mistake, however, Oklahoma City urban renewal displaced many more residents and businesses than it relocated, and it effectively rebuilt the black East Side—redevelopment presumably with much of the same effects as documented almost a decade and a half earlier by Herbert Gans and his description of Boston’s West Side.
But, if anything, massive renewal picked up steam in the seventies with the support of a new ally, Oklahoma City’s first woman mayor, Patience Latting. Independent from Draper and the Cabal, Latting pursued on her own initiative the substance of their economic development program. “During the Latting Years (1973-1983) … one word captured the essence of Oklahoma City politics and life. GROWTH, unchallenged and unquestioned has summarized the desires of most citizens of central Oklahoma. An inscription at the base of a downtown memorial to the original pioneers of 1889 best expresses the city’s mood: Passerby—Look about you and ask this question: Where else within a single life span has man built so mightily”[8].
So it seems Oklahoma City while embracing urban renewal in the early 1960’s, did not actually get started until the late sixties. In using urban renewal Oklahoma City did not pay much attention to the well-publicized critiques of that program, and continued using it and other forms of federal assistance through the early 1980’s—long after the 1974 termination of the urban renewal program. The persistent theme was chamber-led downtown and central city renewal—not urban renewal per se.
[1] Richard M. Bernard, “Oklahoma City”, op. cit., p. 218
[2] Richard M. Bernard, “Oklahoma City”, op. cit., pp. 218-219.
[3] See the Alliance for Economic Development of Oklahoma City. http://www.theallianceokc.org/about
[4] Richard M. Bernard, “Oklahoma City”, op. cit., pp. 220-221
[5] Richard M. Bernard, “Oklahoma City”, op. cit., pp. 221-222.
[6] Richard M. Bernard, “Oklahoma City”, op. cit., pp. 222-223.
[7] Richard M. Bernard, “Oklahoma City: Booming Sooner”, in Richard M. Bernard and Bradley Rice (Eds) Sunbelt Cities: Politics and Growth since World War II (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1983), p. 230.
[8] Richard M. Bernard, “Oklahoma City: Booming Sooner”, op. cit., p. 231.
Ron W. Coan 