Former state Sen. Dave Herbert acknowledged Tuesday that he is “golfing buddies” with a couple of FBI agents, including one who was sitting at the prosecution table in former Senate President Pro Tempore Mike Morgan’s federal extortion and bribery trial.

Herbert, now a lobbyist for the County Officers and Deputies Association, said he has met with the agents several times in recent years to answer their questions about the legislature.

“I had no idea they were working on Mike’s case,” Herbert told Assistant U.S. Attorney Vicki Behenna.

Morgan attorney David Ogle said that Herbert started working with the FBI in the early 1990s, during an investigation into Stifel Nicolaus’s handling of state bond issues.

“How many other legislators have you provided information about to the FBI?” Ogle asked.

“I never went out and hunted down information,” Herbert replied.

He said the discussions tended to be casual, “offhanded” conversations or “watermelon talk.”

“I thought they were trying to learn about the legislature,” he said. “They were pretty naïve about it.”

Herbert said he never discussed a particular piece of legislation with the agents.

“I never called the FBI,” he said. “I never have.”

Herbert said that in February of last year he thought he was having “just another conversation” with the agents when they handed him documents about conversations in 2006 and 2007.

“I said, ‘Oh my god, you guys are going to file on Mike,’” Herbert said.

Behenna asked if he was “trying to snitch people out.”

“I was just shooting the breeze with them,” he replied.

Herbert told Ogle he was unaware that his remarks were being used in the Morgan investigation, saying he did not know the FBI listed him as a “confidential contact” in 2009,

Herbert said he recalled being called into Morgan’s office.

“Senator Morgan said he had some friends that really wanted a landfill in Kay County to go in,” he said.

The landfill project was being put forth by Dilworth Development, which was experiencing intense opposition from Kay County residents and county commissioners, who had drafted regulations that would negatively affect the project.

Herbert said that at first the idea was to try to address the situation without legislation, by working with the Kay County commissioners.

“I wanted to help Mike if I could,” he said.

Herbert said that lobbyist Andy Skeith and Sid Hudson, then a member of Morgan’s staff, also attending that meeting.

“He asked me to talk to the (county) commissioners, to get them to back off,” Herbert said.

At the time, Herbert represented the Association of County Commissioners of Oklahoma.

Later, Herbert said he was unsure whether Morgan made the request that specific, but said “It was pretty evident” given who his client was.

Herbert said he told Morgan he would meet with ACCO’s legislative board to gauge members’ opinion of an effort to move the landfill permitting process from the county level into the Department of Environmental Quality.

He said Skeith had some language he wanted to put into law, which Herbert took to the ACCO board that would allow local governments to establish landfill regulations no more stringent than state rules.

Herbert said the ACCO board refused to support the idea. He said Morgan and Skeith told him they intended to go ahead and file such legislation for the 2007 session.

Herbert said he told them the association that employed him would expect him to kill a stand-alone bill.

“He was asking me to go against the people who were paying me,” said Herbert. “I had to appear to go along with it.”

Herbert said that he is responsible for 15-20 bills each session that his clients want to pass.

“It put me in a pretty tight spot,” he said, adding that the pro tem has the power to kill legislation.

The former lawmaker said he advised Morgan to “sneak it in at the end of session” by placing the language into an existing bill.

“I told them if they’re going to do it, they would have to hide it,” he said.

Prosecutors produced a transcript of a Morgan voice mail talking about Herbert “looking the other way” if the language was slipped into a bill.

Herbert said he told Sen. Roger Ballenger, D-Okmulgee, about his deal with Morgan, obtaining Ballenger’s commitment to kill the measure.

Later, Herbert said, “I showed him the language. He didn’t like it, said ‘I’m going to kill it.’”

He said Ballenger made the comment after Skeith referred to the measure as “the pro tem’s bill.”

Herbert said he did not know Morgan was being paid $50,000 per year by the principals of Dilworth Development.

Earlier Tuesday, attorney Kym Carrier, who worked on the Dilworth Development case, said that Morgan worked on trying to achieve a settlement with the county.

“I knew he was negotiating, and that is practicing law,” she told Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Williams.

Williams said that in a June 26, 2008, email string, payments to Morgan are referred to as “contributions,” with the question posed by the Dilworth clients as to whether they should continue.

The prosecutor also highlighted notes which referred to the clients paying Morgan $20,000 “to beat the bill back.”

Carrier later told defense attorney Drew Neville those notes referred to things the clients told her.

The day ended with initial testimony from Barton Ford, vice president of development for Tenaska Inc., an energy company that in 2005 wanted to construct a coal-fired power plant in conjunction with the Grand River Dam Authority.

Ford said state law needed to be changed to exempt GRDA from competitive bidding and bonding requirements to make the project more viable. Language was eventually written into SB 620 (2005) outlining such an exemption.

Ford said there are only about 10 construction firms that can build power plants, which makes for a competitive process, but one not as formal as state competitive bidding requirements. He also said the state requirement of a performance bond would have added to the project’s cost and could have affected its bonding ability.

The Tenaska executive told Ogle that Morgan participated in a meeting on the project in a substantive way and that he believed Morgan did legal work on it.

Ford said that Tenaska paid Morgan a total of about $250,000.

Last March Morgan, Skeith and attorney Martin Stringer were indicted on charges of extortion, conspiracy and mail fraud in what federal attorneys say was a scheme to use Morgan’s Senate clout to gain positive outcomes for Tenaska and for Dilworth, whose principals paid Morgan $141,000. Morgan alone is charged with bribery for steps prosecutors said he took on behalf of Silver Oak Senior Living, against which the State Department Health wanted to enforce certain regulations. Prosecutors contend Silver Oak paid Morgan $12,000.