Shelley Zumwalt, the former director of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission, has agreed to a settlement with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission after an audit found she approved agency contracts with a company where her husband was a vice president. The audit found she checked “no” on annual forms that asked about conflict of interest.
As a result, she’s agreed to a two-year ban from public office and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine to the state’s general revenue fund.
This isn’t a case of intentional financial gain, Zumwalt said in a statement, but rather a simple matter of failing to recuse herself. The Ethics Commission, in its own statement, called it a “clear warning to all state officials” that “unintentional “violations” would have “meaningful consequences.” It’s a valuable lesson for every public servant: When in doubt, just assume your spouse’s company is, in fact, a conflict of interest.
This article appears in Best of OKC 2025.