Opinion
Legislative session 2009: Round 2
This week marks the first week in which the House will be considering bills that have already been approved by the Senate. It is my responsibility to be the House author of four Senate bills.
Senate Bill 794 is authored by Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, and is a request bill from the Peppers Ranch just west of Guthrie. Peppers Ranch serves as a foster care provider for the Department of Human Services and requested the bill in order to provide transparency and openness to the analysis of the state adoption process. It would require that DHS report the number of unsuccessful adoptions that take place each year. This could be used as a tool to analyze and correct issues related to the adoption process. I will be presenting SB 794 before the House Human Services committee this week.
Senate Bill 980 is authored by Sen. Glenn Coffee. It calls for the creation of a chief information officer to oversee the state’s Information Technology functions. Each year, state government has been spending $340.6 million of your tax dollars on IT and telecommunications. This does not count the salaries of the hundreds of state employees who are assigned to IT departments. These IT functions are spread out on an agency-by-agency basis, with each agency capable of creating their own IT empire. Millions of taxpayer dollars could be saved each year if duplicated processes were eliminated and new technology was used to maximize speed and space. SB 980 seeks to put an end to this type of inefficiency. SB 980 has been assigned to the Government Modernization committee where it is set to receive a hearing next Monday.
Senate Bill 800 is authored by Sen. Anthony Sykes and is an excellent strategy for preserving the integrity of the initiative and referendum process in Oklahoma. As you may be aware, the Oklahoma Constitution allows for the people to pass a petition in order to allow them to vote on issues that the Legislature refuses to take action on. This is how such important laws have been written as Oklahoma’s term limit law and the Constitutional provision that makes it hard for the Legislature to raise taxes without a vote of the people.
Unfortunately, the petition process can be thwarted by minor legal mistakes in the petition language that can sometimes cause it to be thrown out even after the petition organizers have gone to enormous effort to get the thousands of necessary signatures. As you might imagine, this serves as a disincentive for citizens to start a petition for fear that all their hard work would be wasted because of a minor mistake. SB 800 would require that a petition that does not have the necessary legal language can be thrown out before the petition is passed around for signatures. This way, everyone would be on the same page prior to the petition being considered.
Senate Joint Resolution 12 is authored by Sen. Randy Brogden. It would allow the people to vote on placing term limits on statewide officials, limiting them to two terms in office. It mirrors legislation to my House version of statewide term limits, which passed the House two weeks ago.
Both SB 800 and SJR 12 will be considered by the House Rules Committee where I have requested a hearing.
REP. JASON MURPHEY, R-Guthrie, represents House District 31, which encompasses all of Logan County and a portion of northern Edmond. He may be reached via e-mail at jason.murphey@okhouse.gov.
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