One man makes a difference in Killeen recall

Killeen Daily Herald:

Frustrated with elected city officials in his adopted hometown, Killeen resident Jonathan Okray launched a recall movement that not only changed local government but created an unlikely political activist.

"Here we got this guy in our own backyard taking on what could be seen as a Herculean task, quintessentially fighting city hall," said Lou Ann Anderson, a Temple resident and policy adviser for Americans for Prosperity, a national political advocacy group. 

Without any prior experience in political organizing, Okray mobilized the petition-driven recall movement to unseat the mayor and the seven-member city council earlier this year. In May, one council member lost a re-election bid, and another one resigned in June. By overwhelming margins, city voters recalled the other five council members in November. 

"It is reinvigorating, putting government back in its proper place, in the hands of the governed," said Okray about the recall movement's successful outcome. "I'm just as tickled as I can be that people went out, and we actually were able to say that you can fight city hall. We busted that myth."

Last week, a district judge set a May 2012 election date to fill the vacated city seats, which leaves the remaining two-member council without a quorum for six months. The mayor, who wasn't on the recall election ballot, doesn't vote on council matters unless there's a need to break a tie.

"Without Jonathan's initiative, none of this would have been done," said Don Clay, a retired colonel who supported the recall campaign.

Local attorney Dan Corbin said Okray's petition drive to recall the city council came during the right political climate. "He got them organized," said the former elected official who launched a last-minute recall opposition movement through his political organization, Citizens for a Prosperous Future. 

"I think there is a mood in this country that we are very unhappy with the way our government is being run at the national, state and local level," said Corbin, who served on the Killeen council for two years, leaving in 2005. "I think that people can see that most elected officials only care about getting re-elected."

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What this effort showed is that the elected officials were out of touch with the voters whose money they were spending.  While not as bad as the situation in Bell, California, it did show improper stewardship of the taxpayer's money and Okray finally managed to get their attention.  Killeen is fortunate that he settled there after retiring from the army.