By Steve Byas

Politicians can often lead many of us who are involved in politics for principle to despair. Even drift into cynicism. Then, every now and then a politician will do something that makes us stand and cheer.

Such is the case with Attorney General Scott Pruitt.

No great courage is required to rule against unpopular ideas or members of the other party. But, to issue an attorney general's opinion against the actions of a popular fellow Republican office holder, as did Pruitt concerning actions of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Barresi -- now that takes courage.

Barresi hired three high-level staffers at the Department of Education without approval of the State Board of Education. How were they paid? With private funds, which came from the 3R Initiative Inc.

Now, the Board should have approved of Barresi's hires. Had Barresi wanted to hire Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck, and one of the Three Stooges, that should have been her choice. One of the hires, Damon Gardenhire, who is Barresi's communications director, has a solid resume in his field, and is clearly no Daffy Duck.

He told me that he saw nothing wrong with using private funds, and touted his hiring and the hiring of the two others through the funds from the 3R group as a good example of the "public-private partnerships" the state should be engaging in!

Gardenhire is dead wrong. I told him that two wrongs do not make a right (that is not an original concept by me) and that no public employee should be paid with private funds and that Barresi's actions were setting a terrible precedent.

Attorney General Scott Pruitt issued an opinion that agrees with the opinion I gave to Gardenhire.

"A person cannot perform official duties of a state agency with compensation paid directly to them by a private person or entity," Pruitt said in his opinion. "Only employees and officers of the state who are authorized by law to do so may perform the official duties of the state, and those who are so authorized may only be compensated as authorized by law."

This opinion restores my confidence that there is at least one publicly elected official in this state who puts principle above party and popularity. So, a big cheer for Pruitt.

In another action, Pruitt is challenging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA has rejected the state mitigation plan regarding a so-called regional haze the EPA claims is damaging to federal wildlife refuges.

Pruitt could have just rolled over and accepted the heavy hand of the federal government, which state officials have done on a regular basis for decades, but he did not. Instead, he is suing the federal agency. Let's hope he succeeds, because it is estimated that the EPA plan will cost electricity consumers over one billion dollars to outfit older coal-fired plants with pollution scrubbers. The state plan would have allowed a gradual conversion of electrical generation to natural gas-fired plants, but the EPA and its environmentalist wacko allies like the Sierra Club don't care how much their extremism costs us.

Another cheer for Pruitt.

Finally, Scott Pruitt is not Drew Edmondson. Give him a third cheer for that.

Steve Byas is editor of the Oklahoma Constitution newspaper. He may be contacted at: byassteve@yahoo.com