GOVERNOR PLANS EXECUTIVE ORDER
OKLAHOMA CITY – If a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Gov. Kevin Stitt will need to extend his arms quite a distance.
The Governor, apparently smitten with President Donald Trump’s executive order to reduce federal regulations, envisions a similar policy in Oklahoma. Stitt said he intends to sign an executive order directing state officials to slash the number of regulations in Oklahoma. “My goal is to have a 25% reduction in regulations by the end of my term,” said Stitt, who has completed the first year of his four-year term. The Governor said Wednesday he wants to eliminate ‘red tape’ that can hinder business growth in Oklahoma. That would be a monumental accomplishment. According to the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Oklahoma has approximately 145,000 state regulations. Stitt said that is twice the number of regulations in Kansas and more than in Missouri and Arkansas. Of Oklahoma’s neighbors, only Texas, which has 227,000 regulations, and Colorado, with 152,000, have more regulations than the Sooner State, the Governor said.
To provide some context, the Oklahoma Administrative Code (OAC) is a comprehensive list which constitutes 15,342 printed 81⁄2 x 11-inch pages that fill 20 binders (an average of 767 pages each), plus an 803-page index. A 2016 copy of the code is in the Chickasaw Nation Law Library at the Oklahoma City University School of Law. The OAC is organized into six major divisions. Each title identifies an administrative agency, except for Title 1, which includes executive orders, and each chapter identifies a major area of regulatory control within an agency’s authority. Regulations are developed by state agencies and by legislators alike, and in Oklahoma those regulations range from A (abandoned children, abandoned coal mines, abandoned oil/gas wells and abandoned property) to Z (zebra mussels, zinc and zoning). Just a mere sampling of others includes acid rain permits; corn as a feed ingredient contaminated with carcinogenic aflatoxin; dual-lane axles; sales tax permits for bazaars and sales/use taxes for blacksmiths; bullfrogs and bungee jumping; cadavers; diseases such as leprosy and malaria; election watchers; agricultural crop depredation control procedures in re magpies; services for persons with Prader-Willi Syndrome; prairie dog control; septic tank installation; sexually transmit- ted diseases such as chancroid and syphilis; the Take-Over Disclosure Act; tapeworms; Thousand Cankers Disease (which afflicts walnut trees) and tularemia (an infectious disease that afflicts wild rabbits, rodents, and some domestic animals).
Shortly after his inauguration in 2017, Trump signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to cut two existing regulations for every new regulation they implement. Two decades earlier, when he was the House Minority Leader, former state Rep. Larry Ferguson, R-Cleve- land, proposed eliminating one state law for every new law that’s enacted. Ferguson served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1986- 2004, when he was constitutionally “termed out” of office. His proposal was never adopted as state policy during his 19 years in the Legislature nor in the 15 years since. In fact, state lawmakers introduced 2,854 House and Senate bills during the 2019 legislative session, and approximately 525 of them passed both chambers. Stitt signed 513 bills into law last year, LegiScan records indicate – and more than a few of those measures involved new requirements for Oklahoma businesses.