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The Trust Deficit: Can Oklahomans Believe Kevin Stitt's Data Center Promises When Todd Hiett Still Votes on Their Energy Bills?

An investigation into Oklahoma's data center boom, rising electricity costs, and the scandal-plagued regulator who controls your power bill

The Promise

On May 11, 2026, Governor Kevin Stitt stood before cameras and made a bold declaration. He had just signed House Bill 2992, the Data Center Consumer Ratepayer Protection Act, into law. The message was clear and reassuring: Oklahoma's unprecedented data center boom wouldn't cost ordinary families a dime.

"This bill makes it clear that when you plug into Oklahoma's world-class energy grid, you come to the table as a partner and do your part to cover the costs," Stitt proclaimed. "That's how we keep Oklahoma a Top 10 state and the best place in the country to live, work, and raise a family."

The governor's promise arrived at a critical moment. Tech giants Google, Meta, and unnamed "major U.S. tech giants" were descending on Oklahoma, announcing at least 30 data center projects across the state—massive warehouses stuffed with thousands of servers that would consume as much electricity as entire cities. Each hyperscale AI data center gulps down roughly as much power as 100,000 homes every single day.

Oklahomans had reason to be worried. They'd already watched their electricity bills climb nearly 7% in a single year, from 13.81 cents per kilowatt-hour in September 2024 to 14.79 cents in September 2025. Public Service Company of Oklahoma had proposed rate increases that could raise the average residential monthly bill by roughly $25 by July 2026. Oklahoma Gas & Electric wanted to charge customers an average of 55 cents extra per month starting in 2026, escalating to $4.41 a month by 2031.

The new law, Stitt assured them, would fix all that. Data centers would pay their own infrastructure costs. The burden wouldn't fall on hardworking families and small businesses.

But there's a problem with the governor's promise—a fundamental credibility gap that raises a troubling question: How can Oklahomans trust Kevin Stitt to protect them from rising energy costs when he refuses to act against the scandal-plagued official who actually decides those costs?

The Watchdog Who Won't Be Removed

Todd Hiett sits in one of the most powerful positions in Oklahoma government. As a member of the three-person Oklahoma Corporation Commission, he votes on every utility rate increase, every infrastructure project cost, every decision that determines how much Oklahomans pay to keep their lights on and their homes cool during brutal summer heat waves.

The Commission doesn't just regulate energy—it controls it. When Oklahoma Gas & Electric wants to build new power plants to serve data centers, the Commission decides whether ratepayers foot the bill. When utilities propose rate hikes, the Commission decides whether families pay more. In a state where the average household already spends $190 per month on electricity—consuming about 1,547 kWh monthly, well above the national average—these aren't abstract regulatory decisions. They're kitchen-table economics.

And Todd Hiett has been making these decisions while embroiled in a scandal that would have ended most political careers.

In June 2024, Hiett attended the Mid-America Regulatory Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota—a gathering where utility regulators from multiple states discuss the industries they oversee. According to witness statements obtained by The Oklahoman, Hiett got blackout drunk at the conference hotel bar and groped a male employee of a company regulated by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. The witnesses, from the Kansas Corporation Commission, reported that Hiett touched the man inappropriately, putting his hands on his groin area while severely intoxicated.

Hiett acknowledged the incident but claimed he didn't remember it, calling it "horseplay" while admitting to a problem with alcohol dependency. He sought treatment for alcohol addiction but refused to resign.

The calls for his removal came swiftly and from across the political spectrum. Fellow Republican and Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony, the longest-serving statewide elected official in Oklahoma history, called for Hiett's immediate resignation. "The behavior that has been described is beyond inappropriate or offensive," Anthony said. "It is horrifying, disgusting and probably criminal. Alcohol is no excuse."

Oklahoma House Democrats asked Governor Stitt to call a special session to impeach Hiett. Republican State Representative Justin Humphrey joined the call for resignation, saying the allegations of sexual molestation and public drunkenness warranted immediate departure. Commissioner Kim David called for an independent investigation.

Hiett stepped down as chairman of the Commission on August 7, 2024, but remained a voting member. And he remains there today, his term extending until January 11, 2027.

The Governor's Silence

Governor Stitt, who has never been shy about wielding his authority or demanding accountability from state officials, remained conspicuously silent on Todd Hiett.

This silence is remarkable given Stitt's track record. The governor has repeatedly clashed with state officials over matters of control and accountability. He fired Energy and Environment Secretary Ken McQueen in December 2024 for the offense of attending a court hearing in a 20-year-old environmental lawsuit—a hearing McQueen was legally obligated to attend as Trustee for Natural Resources for the State of Oklahoma.

Stitt has battled with Attorney General Gentner Drummond over appointment powers. He sued the legislature over commission appointments, arguing they violated his executive authority. He publicly sparred with lawmakers over who controls state agencies. When former Mental Health Commissioner Allie Friesen faced legislative criticism, Stitt defended her as "shining a light on an agency that has operated in darkness for far too long," calling efforts to remove her a "politically motivated witch hunt."

But when House Democrats formally requested that Stitt call a special session to investigate and potentially impeach Todd Hiett—a statewide elected official accused of sexual battery while intoxicated—the governor who loves to fight for executive power simply didn't respond.

When asked about the Hiett situation in December 2024, Stitt's answer was telling. Rather than address the specific allegations or call for accountability, he pivoted to a broader constitutional argument: "I think that the governor should appoint all these positions because you've got one neck to choke, and the four million Oklahomans vote on the governor."

It was a deflection masquerading as reform philosophy. The Corporation Commission members are indeed elected by voters, but that doesn't absolve the governor of using his bully pulpit to demand accountability. Stitt has never hesitated to publicly criticize elected officials before—just not this one.

The Irony of Protection

The irony is stark and uncomfortable. Governor Stitt signed HB 2992 with great fanfare, promising to protect Oklahoma ratepayers from data center costs. He positioned himself as the guardian of family budgets, the defender against corporate interests passing infrastructure expenses onto consumers.

Yet the person who actually votes on those protections—the regulator with constitutional authority to approve or reject utility rate increases—is someone Stitt won't ask to resign despite credible allegations of sexual battery committed while representing Oklahoma at an official regulatory conference.

This isn't a peripheral issue. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission's decisions on data center energy costs will directly determine whether HB 2992's protections work in practice or exist only on paper. The Commission must decide:

Whether to approve "Construction Work in Progress" (CWIP) charges that let utilities bill customers for power plants before they're even built
How to structure "large load tariffs" that shift costs from residential customers to data centers
Whether utilities' cost projections are reasonable or inflated
What happens when data center demand exceeds initial estimates

These aren't theoretical questions. OG&E has already attempted multiple times to use new construction costs as justification for rate increases. In November 2025, the Commission delayed a vote on OG&E's request to charge customers during new construction, with commissioners split on how to protect ratepayers while allowing necessary infrastructure expansion.

Todd Hiett, notably, was the lone dissenter when the Commission approved certain OG&E projects in December 2025, arguing the orders lacked sufficient customer protections. "The math is so absolutely clear that CWIP treatment is a detriment to rate payers," Hiett said during one hearing. "Those customers may not be customers, they may not be alive. Those businesses may not be alive" by the time any savings materialize.

The situation creates a bizarre paradox: Hiett may actually be voting in ratepayers' interests on specific cases, but his continued presence on the Commission undermines public trust in the entire regulatory process. How can Oklahomans have confidence in utility regulation when one of the three regulators allegedly committed sexual battery against someone whose company he regulates?

The History That Haunts

Oklahoma has been down this road before, and the scars still show.

In 1989, Corporation Commissioner Bob Hopkins cast a crucial vote approving a major rate order for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. It was later revealed that Hopkins had taken a $10,000 bribe from a Southwestern Bell attorney in exchange for that vote. Both Hopkins and the attorney, William L. Anderson, were convicted of federal bribery charges in 1994 and sent to federal prison.

Here's what makes it worse: the vote Commissioner Hopkins was bribed to cast was never overturned. The order he approved through corruption has stood for over three decades. Ratepayers never got their money back. The Department of Defense, which was affected by the corrupt decision, has tried for years to reopen the case and obtain refunds for excess revenues generated through bribery. They're still trying.

Bob Anthony, who worked undercover with the FBI to expose that corruption, has spent decades trying to prevent it from happening again. The restrictions on campaign contributions and ethics rules that Corporation Commissioners operate under today were implemented in response to Hopkins's bribery conviction. As Commissioner Hiett himself noted in 2024, "We are so tightly scrutinized from an ethics standpoint that if someone does business at the commission, they're not allowed to even buy me a glass of tea."

Yet here we are again: serious allegations of misconduct by a Corporation Commissioner, questions about whether he can fairly regulate companies whose employees he allegedly assaulted, and a governor who won't use his political power to demand accountability.

The Stakes Keep Rising

While this drama unfolds, Oklahoma's data center boom accelerates at breakneck speed.

Meta broke ground on Project Anthem in Tulsa—a $800 million facility expected to be optimized for AI workloads. Google announced not one but two new data center campuses in Muskogee County, adding to its existing Pryor facility and new Stillwater construction. Developer Beale Infrastructure has multiple massive projects in the works, including the 506-acre Project Clydesdale in Owasso, whose end user remains unnamed.

These aren't small operations. A typical hyperscale data center consumes about 5 million gallons of water daily in addition to its massive electricity demands. According to one study, data centers in Texas alone consumed 49 billion gallons of water in 2025 and are expected to use as much as 399 billion gallons annually by 2030.

U.S. data centers accounted for 4% of all national energy usage in 2024—183 terawatt hours. By 2030, that number is expected to jump to 426 terawatt hours. Oklahoma's two largest utilities, Public Service Company of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Gas & Electric, have stated in regulatory filings that the growing demand from data centers will exceed their current power generation capacity.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission's Public Utility Division warned in a June 2025 report that speculative data center proposals could lead utilities to overbuild capacity—which inevitably means higher consumer bills.

Oklahomans are already seeing the impact. That 7% year-over-year increase in electricity costs isn't theoretical—it's showing up in monthly bills across the state. Communities from Coweta to Stillwater are grappling with the reality of data center construction: truck traffic, infrastructure strain, water usage concerns, and the looming question of who pays for the massive electrical infrastructure these facilities require.

The Question of Trust

Which brings us back to the fundamental question: Can Oklahomans trust Governor Stitt's promise that data centers won't raise their energy costs when he won't address the Todd Hiett problem?

Trust in regulation requires more than good laws—it requires trustworthy regulators. It requires public confidence that the people making decisions about utility rates aren't compromised by conflicts of interest, ethical violations, or credible allegations of criminal conduct.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled unanimously in December 2024 that Hiett can continue to vote on Corporation Commission cases, rejecting a petition from three Republican state lawmakers who sought to bar him from voting. The court found the lawmakers weren't "aggrieved" enough to bring the case and suggested the Ethics Commission would be a better forum—though the Ethics Commission had already dismissed a complaint against Hiett in May 2025, citing the "rule of necessity" because Oklahoma needs all three commissioners to function.

It's a legal Catch-22 that leaves Hiett in place regardless of the allegations against him. He was elected by voters, the Supreme Court won't remove him, the Ethics Commission won't act, and the governor won't call for impeachment proceedings.

Meanwhile, utility companies continue pushing for rate increases. OG&E even went so far as to request Hiett's recusal from cases involving the company in November 2025, claiming he showed "unacceptable bias" against the utility. Hiett refused, saying OG&E was trying to silence a regulator who was protecting customers.

The spectacle would be darkly comic if the stakes weren't so high: a utility company accused of trying to overcharge ratepayers asks a commissioner accused of sexual battery to recuse himself for being too aggressive in defending those same ratepayers.

What Protection Really Means

HB 2992, the Data Center Consumer Ratepayer Protection Act, contains real and potentially valuable provisions. It requires large-load customers consuming 75 megawatts or more to sign long-term agreements covering infrastructure costs tied to their projects. It mandates separate rate terms for these massive energy consumers. It requires 60-day notice before developers purchase land, with $1,500 daily fines for non-compliance.

On paper, these protections matter. They embody the "cost causation" principle that customers driving new infrastructure costs should bear those costs rather than spreading them across the broader rate base.

But laws are only as good as their enforcement. And enforcement of utility regulation in Oklahoma flows through three people: Corporation Commissioners Kim David, Brian Bingman, and Todd Hiett. They vote on every rate case, every infrastructure plan, every cost recovery mechanism that utilities propose.

Two of those three commissioners were appointed or supported by the same governor now promising to protect ratepayers. Brian Bingman, who assumed office in January 2025, previously served as Stitt's Secretary of State and Secretary of Native American Affairs. Kim David, who became chairman when Hiett stepped down, received over 28% of her campaign donations from political action committees associated with the energy industry.

And then there's Hiett, still casting votes that directly affect whether your power bill goes up or down, despite allegations that would have disqualified him from almost any other position of public trust.

The Reality Check

Let's be clear about what Oklahoma's electricity situation actually looks like.

Yes, Oklahoma currently has relatively low electricity rates compared to the national average—about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour versus a national average around 17-18 cents. This is one reason data centers are flooding into the state. Cheap electricity, abundant land, and business-friendly politicians create an attractive environment for energy-intensive operations.

But those low rates are rising fast, and Oklahomans consume more electricity than most Americans. The average Oklahoma household uses about 1,547 kWh per month, well above the national average. This isn't frivolous consumption—it's geography and climate. Oklahoma's brutal summers require heavy air conditioning use. Cold winters demand heating. The combination means high energy consumption regardless of conservation efforts.

When you multiply high consumption by rising rates, you get painful math. A 7% annual increase might sound modest until you realize it compounds. Today's $190 average monthly electricity bill could easily hit $220 or $240 within a few years if the current trajectory continues. For families on fixed incomes, seniors, and working-class Oklahomans already struggling with inflation, these increases aren't abstractions—they're choices between cooling their homes and buying groceries.

The data center boom accelerates this pressure. Even with HB 2992's protections, utilities must build new generation capacity. Someone has to finance that construction. Someone has to pay the interest on those loans. Someone bears the risk if projected data center demand doesn't materialize or if projects get canceled.

History suggests that "someone" often ends up being residential ratepayers, regardless of what the law says. Utilities are skilled at regulatory maneuvering, at finding ways to socialize costs while privatizing profits. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission is supposed to be the watchdog preventing that—but can it function as a credible watchdog when one of its three members faces serious, unresolved allegations of sexual battery?

The Broader Pattern

The Hiett situation isn't an isolated incident in the Stitt administration—it's part of a pattern of accountability issues that raise questions about the governor's priorities.

When Energy Secretary Ken McQueen attended a court hearing he was legally required to attend, Stitt fired him within hours, calling the nearly 20-year-old environmental lawsuit a "radical left attempt at backdoor regulation through litigation." Stitt replaced McQueen with Jeff Starling, whose "extensive experience in both the private and public sectors" the governor praised.

Yet when Todd Hiett allegedly committed sexual battery against an employee of a company he regulates while representing Oklahoma at an official conference—an act fellow Commissioner Bob Anthony called "horrifying, disgusting and probably criminal"—Stitt couldn't find the political will to call for his resignation or impeachment.

The contrast reveals a hierarchy of accountability in Stitt's Oklahoma: officials who defy the governor's political preferences face swift consequences, while officials who commit alleged personal misconduct but don't challenge the governor's agenda get a pass.

This pattern extends beyond Hiett. Stitt has repeatedly prioritized political loyalty over ethical conduct, defending appointees like Allie Friesen against legislative criticism while firing or forcing out those who don't align with his vision—regardless of their competence or the legitimacy of their actions.

What Oklahomans Deserve

Oklahomans deserve better than empty promises about ratepayer protection from a governor who won't address the elephant in the regulatory room.

They deserve a Corporation Commission whose members aren't credibly accused of sexual battery. They deserve regulators whose judgment isn't questioned by the very companies they're supposed to regulate. They deserve confidence that when they open their power bills each month, the costs they're paying were approved by officials who are beyond ethical reproach.

They deserve a governor who uses his considerable political power to demand accountability from all state officials—not just the ones who cross him politically.

Most of all, they deserve honesty about what the data center boom really means for their electricity costs. HB 2992 might provide some protection, but it's not a magic shield. Massive new power generation capacity costs money. Data centers that consume as much electricity as mid-sized cities create infrastructure demands that someone must finance. The question isn't whether costs will rise—it's how much, how fast, and who ultimately pays.

Right now, the people deciding those questions include a commissioner who allegedly got blackout drunk and committed sexual battery at a regulatory conference. A commissioner whose presence on the panel undermines public trust in every decision the Commission makes. A commissioner the governor won't ask to resign despite calling special sessions and fighting court battles over far less serious issues.

The Path Forward

There is a way out of this mess, but it requires political courage Governor Stitt has so far refused to demonstrate.

The governor could publicly call for Hiett's resignation, using his bully pulpit to make the political cost of staying in office too high to bear. He could request a special legislative session to begin impeachment proceedings, as House Democrats urged him to do nearly two years ago. He could pressure legislative leaders to take action, making it clear that protecting ratepayers requires protecting the integrity of the regulators who set rates.

The Oklahoma Legislature could act on its own, filing articles of impeachment against Hiett without waiting for the governor's request. The bar for impeachment in Oklahoma requires only that an official be found guilty of "willful neglect of duty, corruption in office, habitual drunkenness, incompetency, or any offense involving moral turpitude committed while in office." The allegations against Hiett would seem to check multiple boxes.

Hiett himself could do the right thing and resign, acknowledging that regardless of the legal technicalities that allow him to remain in office, his continued presence undermines public confidence in utility regulation at a critical moment when Oklahomans need to trust that their interests are being protected.

But none of these things have happened. And with each passing month that Hiett remains on the Commission, voting on rate cases and infrastructure costs that directly affect millions of Oklahomans, the credibility gap grows wider.

The Bottom Line

Governor Kevin Stitt signed HB 2992 and promised Oklahomans that data centers would pay their own way, that families wouldn't see their power bills spike, that the state's historic economic growth wouldn't come at the expense of hardworking people.

Maybe he meant it. Maybe HB 2992 will work exactly as intended. Maybe the safeguards will hold, the utilities will act in good faith, and the Corporation Commission will vigilantly protect ratepayers from excessive costs.

But how can anyone really believe that when the governor who made those promises won't address the Commission member credibly accused of committing sexual battery while drunk at a regulatory conference?

Trust isn't built on legislation alone. It's built on accountability, on leaders who demand ethical conduct from those who wield power over citizens' lives. It's built on the belief that when something is seriously wrong, the people in charge will act to make it right.

By that measure, Governor Stitt has failed. He's failed to hold Todd Hiett accountable. He's failed to use his political power to protect the integrity of utility regulation. He's failed to demonstrate that protecting ratepayers means more to him than avoiding a politically inconvenient fight.

Until that changes—until Hiett is gone from the Corporation Commission or Stitt finds his political courage—every promise about data center costs and ratepayer protection rings hollow.

Oklahoma families opening their monthly power bills and seeing costs climb don't need more press conferences and signing ceremonies. They need accountability. They need regulators they can trust. They need a governor who will fight as hard to remove a scandal-plagued commissioner as he fights to defend his own appointees and expand his own authority.

They need to know that when their governor promises to protect them, he means it enough to do the hard work of following through.

So far, they're still waiting.

This article is based on public records, court documents, news reports, and regulatory filings. Governor Stitt's office, Commissioner Hiett's office, and the Oklahoma Corporation Commission were contacted for comment but did not respond by publication time.

The Trust Deficit: Can Oklahomans Believe Kevin Stitt's Data Center Promises When Todd Hiett Still Votes on Their Energy Bills?