Official English Approved - The Final Month of Session

Last week marked yet another deadline by which the House of Representatives and Senate had to take action on legislation or risk having the legislation not be heard this year.

Much debate centered around whether or not the Senate would approve a bill that would allow the people to vote on making English Oklahoma's official language. Due to the insistence of the leadership of the House of Representatives, House author Representative Randy Terrill and Senate author Senator Anthony Sykes, House Resolution 1042 was approved shortly before the Senate's deadline.

It appears there was a significant amount of negotiating between the advocates of a "common English" proposal and those who wanted an "official English" distinction. In the end, the compromise proposal states that all official actions of the state shall be conducted in English, except as required by federal law. The proposal would not limit the use, study or encouragement of American Indian languages and also says that an agency cannot be sued if it cannot provide materials in a language other than English.

The Senate approved the proposal by a vote of 44-2 and it now returns to the House where the House will have the option of accepting the Senate amendments sending the proposal to a vote of the people. I would have preferred a stronger version of the bill.

The Senate also approved five House bills of which I am the author, one of which has been signed into law by the Governor, and four other bills that I will request to be assigned to a conference committee. The House approved four Senate bills that I am authoring, with one going a vote of the people and three going into the conference committee process. In the next four weeks I will be very busy working to refine and advance the seven remaining pieces of legislation.

One of the seven remaining proposals, House bill 1294, would allow Logan County road districts to fund their capital projects without using bonded indebtedness. This is a fantastic concept. I believe that all levels of government entities incur debt too often and pay millions of dollars in unnecessary interest. The savings from implementing House Bill 1294 would stay in the people’s pockets where it belongs.

Another interesting aspect about this bill is that it exposes the fact that state statutes tend to encourage public boards to issue bonded indebtedness. If the no-debt concept can be proven to work in a road district, it might be able to be expanded to cities, counties, public trusts and school boards that wish to fund capital improvements. I am excited that both the House and the Senate have approved this idea and hope to be successfull in achieving final passage.

Also, since we are entering the final phase of session, I will be closing my 2009 constituent survey. The survey is available on at www.housedistrict31.com. I would very much appreciate your input and if you have suggestions on topics you would like to see discussed during my 2009 Town Hall meetings, please submit those suggestions with your survey responses.

Legislative Session 09: Round Two

This week marks the first week in which the House will be considering bills that have already been approved by the Senate. It is my responsibility to be the House Author for four Senate bills.

Senate Bill 794 is authored by Senator Clark Jolly and is a request bill from the Peppers Ranch located just west of Guthrie. Peppers Ranch serves as a foster care provider for DHS and requested the bill in order to provide transparency and openness to the analysis of the state adoption process. It would require that DHS report the number of unsuccessful adoptions that take place each year. This could be used as a tool to analyze and correct issues related to the adoption process. I will be presenting SB 794 before the House Human Services committee this week.

Senate Bill 980 is authored by Senator Glenn Coffee. It calls for the creation of a CIO to oversee the state's IT functions. Each year, state government has been spending $340,577,938 of your tax dollars on IT and telecommunications. This does not count the salaries of the hundreds of state employees who are assigned to IT departments. These IT functions are spread out on an agency-by-agency basis, with each agency capable of creating their own IT empire. Millions of taxpayer dollars could be saved each year if duplicated processes were eliminated and new technology was used to maximize speed and space. SB 980 seeks to put an end to this type of inefficiency. SB 980 has been assigned to the Government Modernization committee where it is set to receive a hearing next Monday.

Senate Bill 800 is authored by Senator Anthony Sykes and is an excellent strategy for preserving the integrity of the initiative and referendum process in Oklahoma. As you may be aware, the Oklahoma Constitution allows for the people to pass a petition in order to allow them to vote on issues that the Legislature refuses to take action on. This is how such important laws have been written as Oklahoma's term limit law and the Constitutional provision that makes it very hard for the Legislature to raise taxes without a vote of the people.

Unfortunately, the petition process can be thwarted by minor legal mistakes in the petition language that can sometimes cause it to be thrown out even after the petition organizers have gone to enormous effort to get the thousands of necessary signatures. As you might imagine, this serves as a disincentive for citizens to start a petition for fear that all their hard work would be wasted because of a minor mistake. SB 800 would require that a petition that does not have the necessary legal language can be thrown out before the petition is passed around for signatures. This way, everyone would be on the same page prior to the petition being considered.

Senate Joint Resolution 12 is authored by Senator Randy Brogden. It would allow the people to vote on placing term limits on statewide officials, limiting them to two terms in office. It is mirror legislation to my House version of statewide term limits which passed the House two weeks ago.

Both SB 800 and SJR 12 will be considered by the House Rules Committee where I have requested a hearing.