OKLAHOMA CITY – The second session of the 58th Oklahoma Legislature ended last Friday with veto overrides, a raft of social legislation and a vivid, public fight between the legislature’s Republican leadership and Governor Kevin Stitt.
Still, even with all that, the legislature developed and passed a $9.8 billion budget, developed new policy for Oklahoma’s rapidly expanding medical marijuana industry, increased the funding for the state’s higher education system, made major changes to the Medicaid program and earmarked millions of dollars to address a backlog in the Department of Human Services Developmental Disabilities program.
But lawmakers probably won’t be going home to campaign anytime soon.
While the regular legislative session is over, the legislature remains in a self-convened to allocate about $1.8 billion in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds. The session is currently standing ‘at ease’ but one legislative leader said she expected to return to the Capitol soon.
The special session could continue well into June.
Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat, an Oklahoma City Republican, said the special session was necessary to examine more than $17 billion in ARPA requests and enacting a spending plan put together by the Joint Committee on Pandemic Relief Funding.
"Ensuring the joint committee's public-driven process can run its full course is in Oklahoma's best interest,” Treat said in a media statement announcing the session. “A concurrent session allows for a comprehensive, strategic plan to be enacted through appropriations after a full vetting of submissions and public discussion of how to best deploy these resources.”
The committee, which includes a representative from the governor’s office, was established in 2021 to determine how ARPA funds would to be spent. Treat said committee hearings and project submissions have been ongoing for months and would continue.
Veto Overrides
With the June 28th primary election rapidly approaching, lawmakers are under pressure to wrap up all their legislative work and return to their campaigns.
At least, that was the plan until the last week.
During a late afternoon press conference last Thursday, Stitt announced he had vetoed three budget bills and said he would call the legislature into another special session on June 13 to address tax issues.
Stitt also used the press conference to complain that his office had been left out of the budget negotiations, which he described as “back room deals between lobbyists and the legislature.”
Stitt said he had vetoed House Bills 4473 and 4474, which would have provided $75 inflation relief checks to individual taxpayers and $150 checks to couples who filed their taxes jointly. The check would have been mailed in December.
The governor said the funds wouldn’t do much to help struggling families, adding that the checks would have federal taxes deducted which reduce the amount families would receive.
“That’s $56, that’s not even enough to fill up your gas tank right now,” he said. “That’s not real relief. It’s a political gimmick during an election year.”
Less than 24 hours later, the Republican-dominated legislature responded to the governor, overriding Stitt’s vetoes on six bills and pushing back against the governor’s complaints.
House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, said his caucus wanted “the most inflation relief possible in any session” and, at the same time, criticized Stitt, calling the governor’s statements as “dishonest and disrespectful.”
“The inflation relief plan the governor is speaking of is the same House inflation plan we already passed months ago,” McCall said. “It’s disingenuous for the governor to attempt to take ownership of something he has been absent on all session.”
The governor’s Thursday afternoon press conference, McCall said, was a “glory-mongering tantrum and…was wholly unbecoming of the office he holds.”
Lawmakers overrode vetoes on Senate Bill 1695, which requires appointed state officials to file financial disclosure forms and House Bill 3501 which requires the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety to include tribal court convictions when determining driving privileges. Other overrides included the line-item veto of a per diem increase for two Oklahoma private prisons and the veto of a measure that created a Route 66 commission.
But lawmakers also bypassed the opportunity to override Stitt’s veto on their $75 inflation relief proposal.
A Flury of Social Legislation
Even with the fight between Stitt and the legislature getting uglier over the last week, Stitt signed several pieces of controversial legislation promoted by the legislature’s Republican leadership.
Following the leak of a draft U.S. Supreme Court opinion earlier this years that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the ruling that legalized abortion in the United States, the legislature rushed to pass several anti-abortion bills, including one being trumpeted as the nation’s most restrictive abortion bill.
House Bill 4327 defines the fertilization of a human egg as “the fusion of a human spermatozoon with a human ovum,” and states that a pregnancy begins at fertilization. The measure also states that abortion “does not include the use, prescription, administration, procuring, or selling of Plan B, morning-after pills, or any other type of contraception or emergency contraception.”
Republican state Representative Wendi Stearman, R-Collinsville, said the measure was an attempt to “discourage abortion, not contraception.”
The Oklahoma Senate’s Minority Leader, Kay Floyd, a Democrat from Oklahoma City, said the session was an assault on reproductive rights.
Stitt signed the bill on May 26.
In addition to legislation restricting abortion, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 615 after a public fight in Stillwater over the school district’s bathroom policy. That rule, which had stood for six years, allowed public students to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity.
Senate Bill 615 overturned that policy and required public school restroom or changing rooms to be designed “exclusively based on biological sex.”
“We must not allow the shrills of the far left to replace facts of biological science and irrefutable evidence,” state Senator David Bullard, the bill’s author, said.
Stitt signed that bill on May 25.
The governor also signed legislation that clamped down on the teaching of racial issues and endorsed a proposal that restricted students’ access to school library books that include discussions of sexual or sex-based issues.
And, despite existing policies that already place restrictions on internet access, the legislature passed laws that require digital and online databases to block students from sending, viewing or receiving material that could be considered obscene.
Money, Lots and Lots of Money
Despite complaints about a lack of transparency in the process, the GOP-controlled legislature signed off on a $9.8 billion budget, which increased spending by more than $850 million from last year.
Stitt, who complained his office was left out of the budget process, said he would not sign the bill but, instead, allow it to go into effect without his signature.
McCall, the House Speaker, called the budget deal historic.
“Thanks to years of fiscal discipline, Republicans have produced yet another increasingly solvent budget that provides historic savings, returns taxpayer money and funds key investments all at once,” McCall said in a media statement. “This budget avoids overspending, helps families fight inflation and positions all Oklahomans for future prosperity, whether in times of opportunity or challenge.”
The budget includes funding increases for several agencies, including a 7 percent increase for the higher education system and a $16.9 million increase – less than one half of one percent – for the common education system.
Career-tech system will see its budget increase by about 2.45 percent, about $3.4 million.
The budget also increases the pay for several segments of state employees, including public safety, court reporters and bailiffs and public health workers. In addition, the deal increased funding for the Aeronautics Commission, from $2 million to $4 million and increased the budget for the Department of Veteran Affairs by 19 percent, about $6 million.
At the same time, the legislature gave itself a substantial budget increase.
Budget documents show the Legislative Service Bureau, the House of Representatives and the Oklahoma Senate will see a total of $13,814,818 in new funds.
According to the Appropriations Summary document, LSB will see a budget increase of $8.5 million while the House of Representatives will have its budget increased by $3,602,662. In the Senate, the budget will be increased by $1,712,156.
The state Ethics Commission–the constitutional agency charged with overseeing and regulating state political campaigns–maintained a flat budget of $687,957.
The Oklahoma School for Science and Mathematics had its budget cut by 4.3 percent from $6.8 million to $6.5 million and the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority saw yet another reduction of in its budget, from $3.2 million to $2.8 million, or about 10 percent.
Lawmakers also reduced the budget for the Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security by about 40 percent, from $2.4 million to $1.4 million.
McCall said the budget reflected the priorities of Oklahomans.
“We've looked at infrastructure. We've addressed health care this year, which has been an issue that we've gone back and forth on in terms of how to how to structure and craft Medicaid expansion,” McCall said to reporters.
Bills That Didn’t Happen – This Time
Though the Republican-controlled legislature described the session as productive and historic, not every GOP-sponsored proposal became law.
Proposals to change the state’s initiative and referendum process, a large stack of bills restricting vaccine mandates and a resolution to change how appellate judges are named to the bench didn’t make it to the governor’s desk.
Those measures, along with new restrictions on the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, and a widely publicized school voucher plan, died on Friday.
Though the legislature has already called itself into special session to allocate ARPA funds, legislative leaders hinted they may bypass the governor’s call for a second special session and, instead, amend the call to their current special session to include tax reform.
Treat said more than $160 million in ARPA projects have not been funded. He said the special session would help speed up the process. Stitt, complained about the special session and warned he would be ready to veto proposals if necessary.
"I can't wait to see what type of lobbyist-controlled projects that they try to throw out," the governor told the Oklahoman newspaper. "I'll obviously veto it, and if they want to override (they can) but Oklahomans are too smart, they'll see right through that stuff, and we'll continue to point that stuff out."