OKLAHOMA

Last big-city stockyard up for sale

OKLAHOMA CITY — On the edge of a thriving downtown dotted with luxury hotels and trendy restaurants is a more than 100-year-old relic of Oklahoma City’s western heritage: One of the world’s largest cattle stockyards.

But maybe not for much longer.

The Oklahoma National Stockyards — the last big-city stockyard in the U.S. — is for sale. The $27 million price tag includes 100 acres of prime property along the Oklahoma River in a growing city of roughly 700,000 residents, where a state-of-the-art NBA arena is set to break ground and a developer is pushing plans for the country’s tallest skyscraper.

Although the stockyard’s owners are hopeful a buyer will keep the cattle coming, they acknowledge the land is attractive for redevelopment.

The sale is a sign of the times for livestock auctions and America’s cattle market, a volatile industry squeezed in recent years by drought, higher production costs and the lowest number of cattle in the U.S. since the 1950s.

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The U.S. is the world’s largest producer of beef but is still a net beef importer, with Canada and Mexico among the top countries accounting for U.S. beef imports.

The number of cattle moving through the maze of wooden pens in Oklahoma City is down roughly 20% over the past two years, said Jerry Reynolds, the stockyard’s president.

The same family has owned the grounds since 1910, but Reynolds said younger generations of the owners are simply not interested in overseeing a major stockyard and the daily grind that entails: a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation with tens of thousands of animals auctioned every week and a seemingly endless maintenance to-do list.

The stockyard went on the market in October and the current owners do not have a timetable for completing the sale.

Rule requires students’ immigration status

OKLAHOMA CITY — Parents enrolling children in Oklahoma public schools will be required to provide proof of their child’s U.S. citizenship or legal immigration status under a proposed rule approved Jan. 28 by the State Board of Education.

The board voted unanimously to approve the rule aimed at helping President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. It still needs to be approved by the legislature and the governor.

The rule requires parents or legal guardians to provide proof of citizenship of their children when enrolling them in public school, including a U.S. birth certificate, U.S. passport, consular report of birth abroad, permanent resident card or other legal document.

The proposed rule would not prevent students without legal status from enrolling or keep them from attending school. But it would require districts to record the number of students for whom proof of citizenship was not provided and to report those numbers, excluding personally identifiable information, to the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

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Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters, the state’s education chief, said the rule is needed to help schools gather information about where to place staff and resources.

There are an estimated 90,000 Oklahoma residents without legal status, including an estimated 6,000 children enrolled in schools in Oklahoma, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank focused on improving immigration policy.

The plan has been sharply criticized by teachers and civil liberty groups, and is causing fear within Oklahoma’s immigrant communities, said Rep. Arturo Alonso-Sandoval, a Democrat who represents Oklahoma City’s heavily Hispanic south side.

MONTANA

Ethics panel probes former Senate president

The Montana Senate will conduct an ethics investigation into a $170,100 government contract brokered late last year by former Senate President Jason Ellsworth with his business associate.

The Senate voted unanimously onJan. 27 to assemble a bipartisan Ethics Committee to investigate the agreement between Ellsworth and Bryce Eggleston, of Stevensville. Senate leaders say they have questions not only for Ellsworth, a Hamilton Republican, but also state Department of Administration Director Misty Ann Giles.

Giles, during an investigation by the Legislative Auditor, acknowledged that the Ellsworth contract violated state law, but DOA saw the deal through, nonetheless. The investigation, released Jan. 24, concluded that Ellsworth’s actions with state funds were both wasteful and abusive.

At issue is the $170,100 agreement Ellsworth brokered with Eggleston at the end of December. Ellsworth, whose tenure as Senate president was expiring, entered into an agreement in which Eggleston would track how the state put into practice several would-be laws limiting the powers of Montana courts. Limiting judicial powers is a priority this legislative session for Senate Republicans, who crafted 27 bills to do so and are expected to pass several in the coming weeks.

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The terms of the agreement with Eggleston triggered several red flags with the legislative auditor. First, contracts over $100,000 undergo a more rigorous procurement process including competitive bidding. Ellsworth had divided the contract into two to keep below that threshold, a move the law specifically prohibits. The auditor’s investigation concluded that dividing the contracts was an abuse of power.

Ellsworth said Eggleston no longer wanted the work because of the political fallout. Eggleston has not responded to phone calls or texts from Montana Free Press, but Ellsworth told the chamber he, too, supports the investigation. He said questions about the contract had become a distraction.

The Montana Republican Party Chairman Don Kaltschmidt said in a statement that the Legislative Audit Division’s findings were disturbing.

NORTH DAKOTA

District on tribal reservation upheld

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 13 upheld a North Dakota state House district on an American Indian reservation, rejecting a challenge by local Republican officials.

The Republicans’ lawsuit had previously been rejected by a three-judge court that found North Dakota lawmakers had good reason to create the district to give Native Americans a better chance to elect their candidate of choice, under the federal Voting Rights Act.

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The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation had asked the justices to leave the district in place.

In a separate case, a federal appeals court is weighing a lower-court ruling that ordered a new joint North Dakota legislative district for two other tribes that had argued that the redistricting plan adopted by lawmakers in 2021 diluted their voting strength. The new district was used in the 2024 elections.

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