Podcast Ep. 78 | Legislative Update and Texts with Mom (with Effie Craven and Jason Dunnington)
Episode Description
Special guests Effie Craven and Rep. Jason Dunnington join the show to discuss where the legislature is with various bills and what it's like to text their moms.
News Roundup
Senate confirms Patrick Wyrick to federal district court (NonDoc)
US district judge for the Western District of OK
Presidential candidate commentary
Discussions planned to reach compromise over mineral rights legislation (Journal Record)
OIPA - Yea; OEPA - Nay
Uncertainty over how state’s settlement with Purdue Pharma will impact other lawsuits (Frontier)
Are counties and municipalities out in the cold due to the state’s settlement?
We don’t know why it came to this (WaPo)
White women dying at alarming rates
It’s not just opiates
A National Atlas of Neighborhood Change (CityLab)
Just play with these maps
Legislative Recap
Criminal Justice Reform
What has been done?
What is left
SQ 780 retroactivity?
COLA
HB2304
2% instead of 4%
Education
More guns in schools?
Leftover food?
Education tax credits
Health care
Step Therapy reform: HB 2638
Medicaid expansion?
Optometrists in stores
Budget
Education budget by April 1?
Teacher pay raise?
$200m to savings or agencies?
Upcoming Events
April 23: Capitol Day
May 4: A Night to Remember: A prom for adults [Fundraiser]
Podcast Ep. 77 | Opioid Settlement, Round 1 (with Attorney General Mike Hunter)
Episode Description
Oklahoma has sued more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies over their creation & marketing of addictive opioid medications. Last week we learned that one company, Purdue Pharma, was settling out of court for $270 million. We sat down with the state's Attorney General, Mike Hunter, to discuss the case and the settlement.
Podcast Ep. 76 | Talkin' Tourism with Lt. Gov Matt Pinnell
Episode Description
Recorded live at Missy's Donuts in Guthrie, OK, we sit down with Lt. Governor Matt Pinnell to discuss his approach to the Lt. Gov position and his other position as Secretary of Tourism & Branding.
Podcast Ep. 75 | Privileged Pollution and Secret Sh*t
Episode Description
This week we discuss a bill to keep pollution audits private, cleaning up the voter rolls, and the high cost of transporting people with mental illness. Just a typical week in Oklahoma, right?
News/Articles
Bill would make pollution information secret for companies that self-audit (Tulsa World)
SB1003, titled the “Oklahoma Environmental, Health and Safety Audit Privilege Act”
Would create a “privileged” status for reports created by entities that self-audit or hire contractors to conduct environmental compliance audits of their facilities. Those audit records would be sealed and not available publicly via an Oklahoma Open Records Act request or for court proceedings. Anyone releasing the information, including public officials, could be subject to penalties.
Oklahoma Prepares to Purge Thousands of Inactive Voters (Oklahoma Watch)
Rising costs: Mental health transports strain law enforcement resources (NonDoc)
You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead (USA Today)
Podcast Ep. 74 | Dead Candidates Society (with Megan Funderburk & Bo Broadwater)
Episode Description
Should deceased candidates be allowed to remain on the ballot? We discuss the implications of that situation along with independent redistricting and the structure & finances of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES).
Articles & Links
Legislators to study cost of living adjustments for Oklahoma state retirees (Tulsa World)
Edmond mayoral election and Edmond Sun poll
Our blog post on Independent Redistricting
Will you go to prom with us?
Attend our spring fundraiser and have the prom experience you wish you had back in high school.
Live Podcast | 3-2-1- Council Contact
This week we held a special, experimental event called “3-2-1 Council Contact,” which was a mashup of two podcasts - Let’s Pod This and the WAFTI Show - interviewing three members of the Oklahoma City city council, James Cooper, JoBeth Hamon, and Nikki Nice. The idea for this event came about because the Tower Theatre sits at the intersection of their respective city council wards.
The conversation included our usual News Roundup and WAFTI’s usual trivia, but we also heard the council members’ perspectives on transportation, infrastructure, MAPS, and more. Full video of the event is below, followed by links to pertinent articles and topics mentioned in the episode.
Before we get to all the links, here is the video of the March 26th OKC City Council meeting that Councilwoman Nikki Nice references during the show:
News & Articles
NewsOK, SB227: Splits OMES into 2 with IT having its own agency
Passed out of Committee
4-3 vote
Agency says this is more expensive way to do business
IT unification takes a hit
Tulsa World; Failure to renew 2014 Excellence in Mental Health Act
Demonstration project
Red Rock, NorthCare, Grand Lake Mental Health Center
Potentially devastating blow to OP mental health services
Major news:
Yesterday (3/25/19) OK Supreme Court declined to request to postpone the beginning of the opioid lawsuit
13 companies
Alleges fraudulent marketing to docs and patients
Seeking $20b in damages
Today (3/26/19): AG Hunter announces settlement with Purdue Pharma
$270m
Sackler family is responsible for $75m
We have so many questions….
Why settle?
Purdue filing for bankruptcy? <— settlement is “bankruptcy proof”
Does this make other companies likely to settler?
Does this save the state money in litigation costs?
Is $270 appropriate?
$200m to one research center seems like…a lot - was this a condition of the settlement?t
$12m for the entire rest of the state seems like...not much
Will funds awarded by the court be distributed similarly?
Some members of the community are quite upset about not getting to confront Purdue in court
Podcast Ep. 73 | Mid-Session Update (with Bo Broadwater)
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:
Abortion
Permitless carry (and a rumored veto referendum in the works for 2020…)
Medical marijuana “Unity bill”
Bills granting the Governor to hire & fire agency heads
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?
News Round-Up
Nowata Co Jail Debacle (Washington Post)
Update on the “Joint” Medical Marijuana Working Group (Tulsa World)
The Stitt Show:
Relevant article: Are CEOs Born Leaders?
Podcast Ep. 72 | Gravel Tax and Sunshine Week (with Tres Savage & Joe Hight)
Episode Summary
Tres Savage from NonDoc explains the finer points of why Oklahoma counties should be allowed to tax the production of aggregates (i.e. rocks and gravel) and we visit with Joe Hight, chairman of Freedom of Information Oklahoma, to discuss Sunshine Week, government transparency, and whether the legislature should be subject to the Open Records Act.
Legislation mentioned
Podcast Ep. 71 | Religion & Politics (with Jon Middendorf)
Most of us were taught that it's impolite to discuss religion & politics, but in Oklahoma, those topics are often intertwined. In the eyes of Jon Middendorf, pastor at @okcfirst, the gospel "has to have skin on it," and by that measure, it is inherently a political conversation. Join us as we discuss the intersection of these two issues and how they define our state.
Podcast Ep. 70 | Auditing Oddity and Agency Appointments (with Julia Kirt)
Summary
Are multiple, concurrent audits of Oklahoma's Medicaid program really necessary? Plus we're joined by Senator Julia Kirt to discuss if allowing the Governor to appoint agency directors more or less transparent than the current system of boards.