OKLAHOMA CITY – Among the 2,240 bills and resolutions filed for consideration in this year’s annual legislative session are measures addressing time, religion, and nuisance telephone calls.
OKLAHOMANS WOULDN’T ‘SPRING FORWARD, FALL BACK’ Daylight-saving time in Oklahoma would be scrapped by House Bill 2868 by Rep. Daniel Pae, R-Lawton, and House Bill 3878 by Rep. Denise Brewer, D-Tulsa.
The state of Oklahoma “elects to reject” DST, both measures declare. “The standard time in Oklahoma shall be Central Standard Time” year-round.
However, the state could revert back to DST (‘spring forward’ one hour, ‘fall back’ one hour) if a future Legislature opted to do so, the bills stipulate. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 is a law of the United States to “promote the adoption and observance of uniform time within the standard time zones” prescribed by the Standard Time Act of 1918. Its intended effect was to simplify the official pattern of where and when daylight-saving time is applied within the U.S. Prior to this law, each state had its own scheme for when DST would begin and end, and in some cases, which parts of the state should use it.
TELEMARKETER ‘SPOOFING’ WOULD BE A CRIME
House Bill 3081 would make it a crime for a telemarketer to tamper with the information that’s displayed on a customer’s caller ID, in order to disguise the caller’s identity – also known as “spoofing.” The legislation would make it unlawful for a telemarketer to cause “misleading information” to be transmitted to a recipient’s caller identification service or device “or to otherwise misrepresent the origin of a telemarketing call.” The bill was introduced by state Rep. Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow.
THE YEAR OF THE BIBLE
The year 2020 would be declared the “Year of the Bible” in Oklahoma if Senate Concurrent Resolution 7 is adopted by both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Bible, “the word of God, has made a unique contribution in shaping the United States as a distinctive and blessed nation and people,” the resolution declares. “[D]eeply held religious convictions springing from the Holy Scriptures led to the early settlement of our nation.” Biblical teachings “inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States,” the resolution continues.
This nation’s history “clearly illustrates the value of voluntarily applying the teachings of the Scriptures in the lives of individuals, families and societies,” SCR 7 asserts. State Sen. Nathan Dahm is the author of the resolution. Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, is the son of missionaries and, after graduation from high school, he too served as a missionary in Romania, in Eastern Europe.