The Oklahoma State Capital

Oklahoma state Rep. Tom Gann is accusing House leadership of censoring an elected legislator after house officials allegedly prevented the House press office from distributing his statement criticizing the rejection of three interim-study requests.

The Inola Republican had requested public hearings on the proposed Inola aluminum smelter, the continued expansion of automated license plate-reader surveillance and possible reforms to the rules governing the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

After all three requests were denied, Gann prepared a statement criticizing the decisions. He says House officials then prevented the taxpayer-funded press office—normally used by representatives to distribute official statements and news releases—from sending it to the news media.

“This is censorship, plain and simple,” Gann said. “House leadership first used its power to prevent an elected representative from studying matters of enormous public importance. It then used its control of a taxpayer-funded press office to suppress criticism of that decision.”

Gann said House Speaker Kyle Hilbert told him the requests were denied because the subjects had been discussed previously. Gann argues that explanation ignores significant legal, political and technological developments that have occurred since earlier hearings.

“An issue does not cease to exist merely because it has been discussed before,” Gann said. “When the facts change, the law changes or new threats emerge, legislators have a responsibility to continue asking questions.”

The most politically prominent request involved the proposed $4 billion aluminum smelter in Inola, located within Gann’s district.

The Legislature approved a large state incentive package for the project in 2025 after the proposal emerged late in the legislative session and moved rapidly through the House.

Since then, the project has become one of the most controversial issues in Oklahoma politics. Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a lawsuit seeking to stop it, citing environmental and public-health concerns. Inola-area residents have organized in opposition, local officials have faced demands for a moratorium, and citizen-led petition efforts have been launched.

A joint committee of the Muscogee Nation National Council recently voted 9-0 to advance a resolution opposing the construction and operation of an aluminum smelter on the Nation’s reservation lands. The resolution warns that pollution from the facility could produce “generational environmental trauma.”

“This proposal implicates public health, agriculture, tribal interests, national security, foreign control of critical infrastructure and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars,” Gann said.

His second rejected request concerned automated license plate readers, or ALPRs. The camera systems photograph passing vehicles and place identifying information into searchable databases capable of documenting motorists’ movements.

On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Chatrie v. United States that law enforcement conducts a Fourth Amendment search when it obtains a person’s historical cellphone-location information—even when the information covers a limited period and is maintained by a private company.

The case involved a geofence warrant rather than license plate readers, and the court did not expressly rule on ALPR networks. Civil-liberties attorneys, however, have said the decision could have significant implications for warrantless searches of privately maintained ALPR databases.

“A major Supreme Court decision involving government access to privately maintained location data is exactly the kind of development that warrants additional legislative study,” Gann said.

Gann also contends that Oklahoma law does not specifically authorize many of the current uses of the devices. He argues that public-safety officials undermine their own moral authority to enforce the law when they deploy surveillance technology without clear legal authorization.

The third rejected study would have examined the parliamentary rules governing the House itself.

Gann maintains that the rules concentrate power in the speaker and a small group of leadership officials while restricting the ability of individual representatives to offer motions, obtain recorded votes, challenge leadership decisions and place issues before the full House.

He called the rejection of that request the “ultimate irony.”

“The rules concentrate power in leadership, and then that same leadership structure prevents members from publicly studying whether too much power has been concentrated in leadership,” Gann said. “It is a system designed to protect itself from scrutiny.”

Gann argues that the process loses its value when leadership determines which representatives may use it and which subjects may be publicly examined.

“The people did not elect 101 representatives merely to provide 101 votes for decisions made by a few,” he said. “They elected us to investigate government, debate policy, ask difficult questions and carry the voices of our districts into the Capitol.”

Gann said neither the rejection of the studies nor the alleged censorship by the House press office will end his efforts.

“If House leadership will not provide a committee room in which these matters can be examined, and if it will not allow the House press office to tell the public that the requests were denied, then I will take the facts directly to the people of Oklahoma,” he said.