Coffee Defends Morgan's Mexico Trip

The Tulsa World's Barbara Hoberock reports that Senate President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee says a recent trip that top aide Fred Morgan took with a private prison lobbyist was not improper.

Morgan, Coffee's senior policy adviser and a former Republican House member, traveled to Mexico in December with Brett Robinson, a lobbyist for GEO, a private prison company that has a facility in Lawton.

Coffee, R-Oklahoma City, said that there is no validity to suggestions of wrongdoing surrounding the trip, adding that Morgan paid his own way: "They had a prior relationship before they were a lobbyist and a government official," Coffee said in an interview with the World. "I think people have personal relationships and they have lives outside of the Capitol building."

Robinson said the trip to Punta Mita, Mexico, involved Morgan and his wife, Page; Robinson and his wife, Karma, and another lobbyist and her husband.

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Democrat's Allegation Refuted

Rep. Al McAffrey, D-Oklahoma City, said today that, "Only weeks after pay raises for staff in the Senate President Pro Tem’s office raised a public outcry, one staffer, former legislator Fred Morgan, actually received an additional 37 percent pay increase, bringing his current salary to over $186,000."

But Senate President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee's director of communications, Randy Swanson, said McAffrey apparently miscalculated Morgan's pay: 'They took Fred’s one-month salary and multiplied it by 12. He’s paid more during session, and less during interim. He has not gotten another raise."

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Morgan Named To Laws Conference

Former Rep. Fred Morgan, legal counsel for Senate Co-Pro Tem Glenn Coffee, has been named an associate commissioner of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, an unpaid position he will hold until 2010.

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