Goucher wins, Hamburger loses CED tiffs

Following a heated 2½-hour meeting Tuesday morning, directors of Circuit Engineering District No. 7 booted Custer County Commissioner Kurt Hamburger off their board and hired Monte Goucher to continue as a consultant for up to a year at an annual salary of $100,000.
Goucher’s resignation as executive director of the organization had been accepted at the board’s November meeting. Board President Joe Don Dickey of Tillman County said after Tuesday’s session that Goucher was making $150,000 a year as executive director but that did not include benefits. With an “insurance package and incentives,” his former pay was estimated by Dickey at $180,000 a year.
The vote to retain him as a consultant was 7-4. Steven Fite of Greer County made the motion to do so with Gary Lewis of Harmon County seconding. Also voting yes were Dickey, the board chairman from Tillman County; Johnny Davis, Beckham County; Junior Salisbury, Dewey County; Brian Hay, Roger Mills County; and Kirk Butler, Jackson County.
Voting no were Lyle Miller, Custer County; Raydell Schneberger, Washita County; Mike Allen, Blaine County; and Tim Bingham, Kiowa County.
Miller was allowed to take Hamburger’s seat and vote, once the other directors voted unanimously to unseat him.  
Hamburger was kicked off the board pending the outcome of a misdemea-nor criminal charge filed against him in September. If the charge is dropped or he is found not guilty in court, he will be allowed to return to the board.
The charge is “personal interest of official in transaction” and was referred to during Tuesday’s meeting by Steve McCaleb of the Oklahoma City law firm of Derryberry & Naifeh, LLP, who was representing CED 7, as “embezzlement of state property.”
It involves a $300 profit Hamburger and his company, H&H Auto Salvage of Weatherford, allegedly made when he tried to help out a fellow commissioner in Logan County. The transaction involved the sale of a mower at auction which had been declared surplus from Hamburger’s District 2 inventory. He ended up buying the mower himself and reselling it to Logan County for $300 more than he paid for it. An affidavit filed with the charge says Hamburger stated that he placed the $300 into his district’s petty cash fund, but Agent Trevor Ridgeway of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation could find no evidence to show that it was ever deposited into petty cash.
The Logan County commissioner had tried to buy the mower directly from Custer County and Hamburger reportedly had told him that it was already committed to the auction and to buy it there. But by then it was reportedly too late for Logan County to get an auction account set up so the two commissioners agreed that Hamburger would buy it and let Logan County reimburse his district. 
The case is scheduled to be heard Dec. 11.