By John Jech, Candidate for Osage Nation Congress

Hello my name is John Jech and I am announcing my candidacy for Osage Nation Congress. I graduated from Northeastern State University in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and major in accounting. I worked as a billing specialist for WILTEL Communication in Tulsa from May 1994 until December 1994. I began working for the Osage Nation in December 1994 as a junior accounting clerk and was promoted to senior accountant in 1995. In 1996 I accepted the Controller position and in 2006 I began serving as the Chief Financial Officer/Treasurer for the Osage Nation. I passed the Certified Public Accountants exam in 2002 and am a member of the Oklahoma Accountancy Board. I was born and raised in Pawhuska and currently reside here with Melissa and our baby girl Cortlynn.

During my 15 years of employment with the Nation I have developed a very good working knowledge of our organizational structure. I have been through three elections and two governmental changes during that time which has allowed me the opportunity to work with a diverse group of tribal leaders. I have seen first hand the positive and negative affects tribal leaders decisions can have on the operations of the Nation’s government and morale of its employees and citizens. If elected I will be faced with making tough decisions affecting our Nation and I feel I can draw on my past experiences to make fair and educated decisions for the betterment of the majority of the citizenry.

I have seen our Nation grow tremendously over the past 15 years due in large part to our gaming enterprises. This additional revenue stream has allowed the Nation to provide services to our people that were not available five years ago. Although this has been beneficial to our tribal members it is important that we continue to diversify our revenue generating capabilities beyond gaming. If elected I will work with my fellow Congressional members and the Executive branch to ensure the Nation’s economic future is not dependent entirely on gaming. However, I do believe we have enormous potential for growth in our gaming operations and we must be willing to explore the options before us.

The Nation currently has numerous programs both federally and tribally funded which benefit our citizenry on many different levels. If elected I will work to continue to improve and expand the services we offer to our members.

Finally I am a shareholder as are many members of my family. Our leaders have a duty to protect the minerals estate; and if elected I will continue to support the protection of the shareholders interests.

This Nation has been good to me over the past 15 years and for that I am grateful. I feel my education and experience in working for this Nation will enable me to serve our people well. I will listen, be fair and do my best to make educated decisions. I would appreciate your vote this June. God Bless.