Mission Details
Target: Carol Jones
Theater: Pawhuska, OK
Operation: LEDGER CHECK
Description: Direct questioning regarding city finances and Eubanks' administration.
Disposition: M.I.A. — Resigned.
The town of Pawhuska, Oklahoma sits in the rolling red hills of Osage County, a place most Americans recognize from the cheerful cookbooks and Walmart displays of celebrity rancher Ree Drummond. It is a small, quiet community where neighbors trust their local government to spend public money carefully and honestly. That trust, according to a Guerrilla News civil rights inquiry, may be dangerously misplaced.
Our correspondents drove into Osage County on a Thursday evening with a single question burning in their minds: why is a city council preparing to hand a $25,000 bonus to a man facing felony embezzlement charges in two separate Oklahoma counties?
The Man Behind the Desk
Jerry Eubanks holds the title of interim city manager for the city of Pawhuska. It is a position of enormous public trust. A city manager controls budgets, oversees departments, approves expenditures, and sets the operational tone for every city employee. Residents count on that person to be a faithful steward of tax dollars.
What Pawhuska's city council appears to have overlooked, or chosen to ignore, is a legal record that should have disqualified Eubanks from the role entirely. According to records reviewed by Guerrilla News correspondents, Eubanks is currently charged with embezzlement in two different Oklahoma counties, with the alleged offenses tied to two separate municipalities where he previously held positions of financial authority. Additionally, the Blackwell Municipal Authority holds a civil judgment against him exceeding $30,000, stemming from allegations that he stole and embezzled equipment belonging to that public body.
Read that again slowly. The man managing Pawhuska's city finances is accused of stealing from at least two other Oklahoma cities. And the Pawhuska City Council was, at the time of this investigation, actively debating whether to reward him with an extra $25,000 drawn from the public treasury.
Inside the Council Chamber
Our correspondent arrived at the council meeting alongside field producer Lee, who navigated the team from Tulsa to Osage County. The atmosphere in the building was immediately notable. Supporters of Eubanks clustered near the entrance. Several individuals connected to the local police department were present, and the correspondent noted at least one person who appeared to serve as a kind of informal escort for the city manager throughout the evening.
When our correspondent approached Eubanks directly and asked him, plainly and politely, what the $25,000 bonus was for and what he had done to earn compensation above and beyond his existing contract, Eubanks repeated a single phrase: no comment. Asked whether the bonus might be used to repay the Blackwell Municipal Authority for the property he allegedly stole, Eubanks said nothing. Asked whether the money might go toward repaying private individuals who, according to text messages obtained by our correspondent, had lent him money during periods of financial hardship after he personally appealed to them for help, Eubanks turned away.
The contrast was stark. Here was a man on the public payroll, sitting inside a public meeting funded by taxpayer dollars, refusing to answer a single question from the public whose money was about to be spent on his behalf.
When our correspondent turned to a council member and pressed for a justification, the response offered was that Eubanks had been working "eight to ten days a week." Our correspondent noted, with some patience, that a week contains only seven days. The council member did not elaborate further. No one on the dais offered a documented performance evaluation, a written justification, or any formal record of the extraordinary work supposedly performed to merit a five-figure bonus on top of an existing contract.
The Woman Who Walked Away
Perhaps the most telling development in this entire story is not what happened inside that council chamber. It is what happened just before our correspondents arrived.
Carol Jones, the assistant city manager for Pawhuska, had resigned. She was a local woman, someone with ties to the community, someone who knew the inner workings of this city government at close range. And she quietly walked out the door.
Our correspondent noted on the record that Jones may have had direct access to the financial documents circulating inside city hall. The documents in question, financial reports distributed to council members, reportedly bore the hallmarks of internal city-generated paperwork rather than certified statements produced by an independent banking or accounting institution. The numbers, according to sources, looked irregular. They looked off.
Carol Jones saw what was in front of her every day. She had access to the ledgers, the reports, the correspondence, the approvals. She built a career in municipal administration and clearly understood what healthy city finances look like and what troubled ones look like. And then, without any public statement, she was gone.
Guerrilla News correspondents are formally calling on Carol Jones to come forward. If she witnessed financial irregularities inside the Pawhuska city administration, the residents of that city deserve to know. She is not accused of any wrongdoing. She is, by all available indicators, a potential witness to conduct that may have harmed the very community she served. Her silence, while entirely understandable given the environment she was leaving, may cost Pawhuska's residents dearly.
A Pattern That Should Alarm Every Taxpayer
This investigation exposes something that goes beyond one city manager in one small Oklahoma town. It exposes a systemic failure of due diligence that is disturbingly common in small municipal governments across this state and across this country.
Jerry Eubanks did not hide his legal troubles. His charges in two counties are a matter of public court record. The civil judgment from the Blackwell Municipal Authority is documented and searchable. The pattern of alleged financial misconduct stretches back through multiple prior government positions. None of it is obscure. None of it required sophisticated investigative techniques to uncover. It required only the basic responsibility of a city council to look before it hired.
Instead, this council not only hired Eubanks, it gathered in public session to consider handing him an additional $25,000 at a time when the assistant city manager had just walked out, financial reports looked questionable, and court dates in multiple counties loomed on the calendar. Someone at that table made a motion. Others were prepared to vote yes.
This is not an isolated quirk of Osage County politics. This is what happens when small governments operate without scrutiny, when local media is absent or incurious, and when no one sits in the public comment chair and asks the questions that residents would ask if they knew what their representatives were doing in their name.
What Comes Next
Guerrilla News will continue monitoring the Eubanks situation in Pawhuska. The criminal cases pending in two Oklahoma counties will move through the court system, and this outlet will report on each development. The financial records that appeared anomalous to our correspondent will be the subject of a formal open records request, and we will publish what we receive.
Most importantly, we are asking the residents of Pawhuska to pay attention. Attend your city council meetings. Sit in the public comment chairs. Ask your representatives why a man charged with stealing from two Oklahoma cities is managing your city's money, and why someone thought a $25,000 bonus was an appropriate gift to hand him while those charges are unresolved.
Carol Jones knew something. She made a choice. Now the question is whether Pawhuska's citizens will make a choice of their own before it is too late.
If you have information about financial irregularities inside the Pawhuska city government, or if you were one of the individuals who lent money to Jerry Eubanks after receiving a personal appeal from him, contact Guerrilla News through our secure tip line. Your identity will be protected. The public has a right to know.
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