OKLAHOMA CITY — At the beginning of every session, the numbers are big.
And, since the Legislature first met in 1907, those numbers have continued to increase. For example, the first initiative petition was filed in 1908. As of 2022, 93 initiative petitions had appeared on a statewide ballot — 43 passed and 50 failed.
And history has continued to change how legislation is processed in Oklahoma. This year, before the Second Session of the 60th Oklahoma Legislature convened, members of the Oklahoma Senate filed 1,021 new pieces of legislation — that is, bills and resolutions.
In the House of Representatives, members filed 1,628 pieces of legislation.
Since this was the second session of the 60th Legislature and since each legislature lasts for two years, and further, since it’s almost impossible to completely kill a piece of legislation, there are always a large number of bills and resolutions that carry over from one session to the next.
This year, that carryover number was 2,627.
Of all those bills, only about 500 or so made their way to the governor’s desk.
Does every bill or resolution get heard by a committee? No. Do lawmakers vote on every bill or resolution? No.
The legislative process, along with a simple voting method and the idea that no idea is ever completely dead, are all part of the system used by the Oklahoma Legislature.
“The passage of a bill into a law requires the cooperation of many gatekeepers,” the Oklahoma Historical Society says. “The process provides opponents of a proposal many opportunities to prevail. Few bills survive the process to become law.”
State Sen. Paul Rosino, a Republican from south Oklahoma City, said there is always a large number of bills that gets reduced quickly. Rosino explained the process during a recent television appearance.
“I will tell you of the thousands that will be filed, plus the ones from last year that are still sitting out there, only a couple of hundred of them become law,” Rosino said. “Some of the stuff that for sure, like you mentioned, is for clickbait and just to put themselves on TV or Twitter.”
The bills that matter to people will find their ways to committee, he said. “And those bills eventually make it to the floor.”
State records show that during the 1925 regular legislative session, which was the 10th Oklahoma Legislature, lawmakers filed a total of 835 bills.
That figure includes 478 bills filed in the House of Representatives and 357 bills filed in the Senate. Fewer than 20% of those measures survived.
Years later, during the 47th Oklahoma Legislature, 1999–2000, only 816 passed both houses of the Legislature and were enacted. That year, lawmakers had introduced a total of 3,435 bills and resolutions.
Still, those numbers shouldn’t be a surprise, said former University of Oklahoma political scientist Keith Gaddie, who now teaches at Texas Christian University.
“Large numbers of bill filings is normal,” he said. “Sometimes you file to just get a hearing or advance the idea for the future.
Other bills are performative to pretend you are addressing an issue.”
And some bills, Gaddie said, are considered placeholders. Those measures can have the title and text stricken, “so you have ‘shells’ to carry language for problems or bill needs that come up after the filing deadline.”
Because the legislature’s time is limited, while at the same time, lawmakers have a large number of issues that need to be address politics, Gaddie said, comes into play. “You have to pull hall and trade to get a bill passed, and not everybody knows how to do that but they do learn,” he said.
Oklahoma lawmakers will return to the Capitol in February of 2027.
M. Scott Carter is an award-winning political and investigative reporter with more than 40 years’ experience covering federal and state government and politics in Oklahoma. He can be reached at scott. carter@swoknews.com.