OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond sent State Superintendent Walters a scathing legal letter Wednesday, dressing down Walters for the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s more than one-year-long delay in distributing thousands of dollars state legislators gave the department to provide Oklahoma schools with life-saving inhalers. In his letter to Walters on Wednesday, Drummond made clear, in no uncertain terms, that Walters needs to get schools the inhalers immediately and should never have waited this long to begin with. Funding for emergency inhalers in schools hits possible roadblock In July 2023, Oklahoma legislators approved a budget line item that gave OSDE $250,000 to provide public schools in Oklahoma with emergency rescue inhalers, to help prevent children with asthma from dying if they suffer an attack while at school. In the budget line item providing the funds, legislators specified they would provide the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) with the funds, and OSDE was to give that money to the McLarty foundation, a non-profit founded in honor of a child who from an asthma attack at school. In turn, the McLarty foundation was supposed to use the $250,000 to purchase and distribute inhalers to Oklahoma schools. But State Rep. Mickey Dollens (D-Oklahoma City), who sponsored a 2019 bill that helped the McLarty foundation supply some Oklahoma schools with inhalers, says OSDE never dispersed the 2023 money out to the foundation. “Unfortunately, Ryan Walters and the Department of Education just sat on it and did nothing for over a year until local news agencies were asking them about the progress of that,” Dollens told News 4. LOCAL NEWS: AG Drummond issues letter on emergency inhaler purchase delay Finally on August 12, more than a year and one month after legislators gave OSDE the $250K, Walters requested Drummond give him a formal opinion with guidance on how to use the money. Walters asked Drummond: What procurement options exist to satisfy the 2023 legislative line-item appropriation of $250,000.00 for “inhalers for all schools?” May the OSDE award the $250,000 to the McLarty Foundation as a sole source supplier for the purchase of the inhalers? Must the OSDE pay for emergency inhalers before or after the goods or services have been received? A couple days later, OSDE told school districts if they wanted inhalers, districts would have to purchase them with their own money, and then submit the expenses to get reimbursed by OSDE. Drummond responded to Walters with a ‘letter of counsel’ Wednesday, telling Walters he was extremely concerned about his lack of urgency.   Letter_Ryan-Walters-re-Emergency-Inhalers-Letter-of-Counsel_100224Download “Regardless of the method, speed is of the essence,” Drummond wrote in the letter. “Waiting more than a year to ask for guidance, changing procurement methods multiple times, and now requiring school districts to individually procure emergency inhalers is neither speedy nor responsible. Candidly, failing to implement legislative directives and installing roadblocks to potentially life-saving medicines at the expense of kids reflects a lack of understanding of basic purchasing procedures, at a minimum, and perhaps a disingenuous unwillingness to act.” ‘Political suicide’ Ryan Walters calls for his own impeachment: How did it come to this? "The state Attorney General is trying to tell the State Superintendent and the Board of Education in the clearest way possible that this is a problem,” said Tim Gilpin, a former Assistant Oklahoma Attorney General. Gilpin says, the fact that Walters felt the need to request an opinion from Drummond, despite the legislature already spelling out for him what to do with the money, is highly alarming. “I mean, it's either incompetence or it's some sort of an unlawful use of power to impound or to stop the legislature's actions from occurring,” Gilpin said. “And that's serious business.” Rep. Dollens echoes those concerns—and then some. State school board member, lawmakers raise legal concerns over Walters’ proposed Bible purchases “Ryan Walters can find $6 million to buy Bibles and force them into public schools, yet cannot manage $250,000 with very specific instructions on how to get inhalers into classrooms,” Dollens said. “Maybe if the inhalers were branded with Trump logos, they would have already been in there.” News 4 reached out to OSDE to ensure the agency’s perspective could be included in this report, but nobody responded.