Politics

It is a very old story and I have heard it repeated many times. It seems that legislators cannot hold a budget hearing or meet…

Last week I described the dangerous decline of transparency in the Legislature and how this is leading to an environment into which terrible ideas are…

Last week I described a key moment from the 2015 legislative session that put the Oklahoma Legislature on a downward transparency trajectory: legislators suspended an…

Last week I wrote of the devolution of openness in the Oklahoma Legislature.

Longtime readers will know that from the time of my election in 2006 until a few years ago I was quite bullish on the potential…

It was the last straw. For years, an area-based business owner had managed to deal with the stressful and potentially punitive sales tax collection requirements…

That was my first thought as I stared up at the monitor in the Appropriations Committee hearing room. The committee was just starting to consider…

Would you believe that the House Appropriations Committee approved the 2018 state budget without reading a single word of the bill?

As this legislative year concluded, those who had been trying to raise taxes gave up on all but the smallest pretense of following the Constitution.

Though far removed from reality, the legislative world does share some aspects with the real world.

It was the moment that left no doubt in my mind: the fix was in. Not only would this not be a year for reform…

This year’s legislative session was dominated by a group of “raise taxes at all costs” ideologues who deployed aggressive strategies to advance an array of…

Much of the time and energy of this legislative session was consumed by the push to raise taxes, even if those taxes were unconstitutional. This…