Let's Fix This

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Podcast Ep. 73 | Mid-Session Update (with Bo Broadwater)

Andy Moore

Episode Summary

As bills move from one chamber to the other, we take a look at what legislation has been signed, what's [mostly] dead, and what are still alive. Special guest: Bo Broadwater from The Journal Record Legislative Report.

Show Notes

This year there are a maximum of 116 calendar days in the regular legislative session, from February 4th to May 31st, and today is day 44. That means that, according to the calendar, we’re roughly a third of the way through the session. Last week we passed a major deadline in the life of legislation - in order to stay alive, all bills needed have been passed out of committee and passed the floor of the chamber of origin. That is, all bills that started in the House must have fully passed out of the House and sent over to the Senate and all Senate bills must have fully passed out of the Senate and been sent over to the House. We started the year with 2,815 bills and joint resolutions, and now we’re down to just under 1,000.

Since this week was a bit of a snooze, we decided to use this episode as a chance to get caught up on which bills have died and which ones are still alive.

Before we do that, let’s start with the bills that Governor Stitt has already signed. There are 11 of them, including:

Now let’s highlight some of the notable bills that have died (or at least appear to be dead):

  • HB1182, which would have revoked medical license of any physician that performed an abortion (in which the mother’s life was not endangered)

  • Medicaid Expansion...at least McCourtney’s proposal. (Or...maybe not

  • Increasing minimum wage to $10.50/hr (which, if you worked full time, would only be $21,840/ yr)

  • Charging legislators if they authored bills that are found to be unconstitutional (fun fact: they would have only been fined a maximum of $46)

  • Exempting Oklahoma from Daily Savings Time

  • Also bills that we at Let’s Fix This care about (they’re all dead)

    • Elimination of straight party voting

    • Automatic voter registration

    • Nonpartisan county elections

    • Nonparty sheriff elections

    • Independent Redistricting

Okay, so what’s left? What bills are still out there, trying to find their way

  • State steak! SB21 by Sen. Casey Murdock passed the Senate, now goes to the House.

  • Strong beer & wine at sporting events and art & music festivals

  • HIV education mandate. HB1018 by Rep. McEntire has been assigned to the Senate Education Committee.

  • Making SQ780 retroactive. (HB1269 by Dunnington)

  • SB 509: Significantly restricting Step Therapy

And perhaps the most important part of the legislative session that is yet to come:

  • The Budget, The BUDGET - THE BUDGET!

    • OMES $16m supplemental request

    • Where to stash that extra $200m?

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