Mental health agency launches new CFO search following Oklahoma lawmaker grilling

OKLAHOMA CITY – A day after telling lawmakers it wouldn’t hire a chief financial officer until it “gets through” its budget situation, a state agency said it is moving forward with filling the position permanently.

The Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services’ job posting Friday came a day after House lawmakers questioned the qualifications of Skip Leonard, the agency’s interim CFO. During an extensive grilling, he was unable to answer basic questions about the agency’s financial irregularities.

Leonard, a former city manager, said he has no experience overseeing finances for a state agency and is not a certified public accountant. Lawmakers said he was being paid $165 an hour to serve as interim or as much as $343,000 a year.

Leonard told lawmakers that the mental health department was waiting to hire a permanent CFO until it “gets through” its current budget situation. 

Lawmakers are trying to determine why the agency has a $43 million shortfall and why mental health officials believe a $6.2 million supplemental appropriation would be enough to fill the gap.

Leonard, who oversees the agency’s over $610 million budget, was unable to answer many of the questions, leading some lawmakers to focus instead on his own qualifications and pay rate. 

The agency said in a statement to Oklahoma Voice on Monday that it posted the position on Friday “as part of our ongoing operational readiness and succession planning.”

The agency did not provide a responsive statement as to what changed between Leonard’s testimony Thursday and Friday when the job was posted.

“The agency wants to ensure it is positioned for success in the future,” the agency’s statement said. “We remain committed to making staffing decisions only when they are fully aligned with both fiscal priorities and operational needs.”

Rep. T.J. Marti, R-Broken Arrow, who was among the legislators who questioned Leonard’s qualifications, said Monday that hadn’t heard that the agency had launched a search for a new CFO, but said it’s “great news.”

“I think they need to launch a search for a CFO, somebody that can dig deep into the numbers and that is trained for the position,” Marti said. “It sounded like they were going to name Skip the CFO, and I’m not so sure that that’s something that many of us in here would be on board with.”