Okla. Veterans Commission Votes To Fire Veterans Affairs Executive Director

The executive director of the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs was fired Friday.

The Oklahoma Veterans Commission voted 5-1 to terminate Joel Kintsel, said a source at the meeting. Kintsel told News 9 he had "no comment" about his firing.

Kintsel had a contentious relationship with the Veterans Commission, claiming that members were not properly appointed. 

In a letter to Sen. Roger Thompson on Feb. 3, Kintsel said since June 28, 2022, eight of the nine members of the Veterans Commission were replaced, including six who were fired.

Kintsel claimed at least three of the commissioners, including Chair Robert Allen, were unlawfully appointed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, according to a separate letter he wrote to Allen.

Kintsel said in his letter that Allen and at least two other commissioners were not nominated by the veteran service organizations they claimed to represent, nor were they members of said organizations. Rather, Kintsel accused the commissioners of obtaining their seats because of collusion between Allen, Secretary of Military and Veterans Affairs John Nash, Stitt and former Attorney General John O'Conner.

Current Attorney General Gentner Drummond also said three of Stitt's Veteran Commission appointments were unlawful. 

Drummond said the state required the commission to have nine members, including representatives from six specific veterans groups.  But Drummond said Stitt did not adhere to that process when appointing commissioners. 

According to Drummond, Stitt claimed the veterans groups were ineligible to nominate members because they did not comply with an audit requirement. But in this case, there was no audit requirement because the commissioners were removed a year prior to the expiration of their terms, Drummond argued. As a result, nominees to the Veterans Commission must be picked from lists provided by the specific veterans organizations, Drummond said.

In addition to Stitt, Drummond also criticized Kintsel.

“This entire episode has been nothing short of a spectacle," Drummond said in a news release. "It is unfortunate that the governor has not followed the proper appointment process, and it is equally unfortunate that the executive director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs is acting irresponsibly and not in the best interests of veterans. It is wholly unacceptable that Oklahoma’s honorable veterans have been left without a functional commission."

The relationship between Kintsel and the Veterans Commission became so contentious that Kintsel refused to allow the commission access to the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs facilities, Allen said. Instead, the Veterans Commission had to have its meetings at the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.

News 9 emailed Allen for a statement on Kintsel's firing, but did not receive a response as of early Friday evening.

During a news conference Friday, prior to Kintsel's firing, a reporter asked Stitt about the Veterans Commission appointments:

"We're going to follow and do exactly what the law tells us to do," said Stitt. "And so - we won twice in court that we did it the correct way. But just out of the abundance of, you know, just because we don't need to mess around with this. And the Legislature, when I met with them, they said, 'Hey governor, be better if you just kept those two people that are in question on the sidelines. So we asked them to abstain from any vote."

Stitt also criticized Kintsel for being fiscally irresponsible.

"The governor has no authority to hire or fire a guy that's spending hundreds of millions of dollars. And he lost $21 million in building some veterans center in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. Now, he's asking the Legislature to backfill that money," Stitt said.

But in his letter to Sen. Thompson, Kintsel said the $21 million in damages for the construction project was the fault of the architectural and engineering firm, and that the Oklahoma Department of Veteran Affairs contracted with another firm to fix the design errors.

Kintsel ran against Stitt in the governor's race, but lost in the Republican primary in June 2022.