County Commissioners Glen Murray and Wilson Lyles were joined by State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd as guest speakers at the State of the County luncheon last Thursday, September 4, sponsored by the area Chambers of Commerce.

The speakers’ themes were of positivity, working together, fiscal responsibility, and growth.

Murray and Lyles spoke of County government officials working together for the betterment of McClain County. They said they work well with the Sheriff’s Office, the area communities, the Chickasaw Nation, Congressman Tom Cole’s office and the State of Oklahoma entities.

Byrd said McClain County is the second fastest growing county in Oklahoma. She added that the county has worked well with her office, and has had clean audits. She said the latest of the county audits, as well as local EMS audits and city and school estimate of needs, can be found online at the State Auditor and Inspector’s website (www.sai.ok.gov/audit-reports/) under audit reports.

County commissioners’ duties, according to Murray, include budgeting and seeing over the county courthouse and departments, maintaining of roads and some of the small town streets, the workforce program, taking part in statewide county entities. Lyles said they look over all the county business and courthouse officials and their budgets.

McClain County has a budget of just over $14 million to work with, according to Lyles, but they have closer to $25 million in all county government funds.  Lyles said the budget increased about 4 percent this year over the last year. He said the sheriff’s department is the largest part of that at about $5 million. Lyles said McClain County’s population has doubled since 2000.

We are growing and people want to be here. As you drive the roads, you see the rooftops, you see the businesses — this is where people want to be.

He said the area community leaders are staying ahead of the curve on the growth, and that is also what the commissioners want to do.

Byrd said the McClain County commissioners and all of the county officials are doing a lot of things right, and have worked hard over the last decade to have clean audits, and immediately correct anything that is noted. Byrd said this is not the same in many counties throughout the state. She noted that McClain County is an example to other counties in the state, and that all of the elected officials seem to be working together for the betterment of the county.

McClain County Commissioner Terry Daniel was not in attendance at the luncheon, due to a family illness.