I Will Vote No!

All indications point to this being the last week of this year’s legislative session. The Legislature will go home a week early. This is good news for Oklahomans as not only will there be cost savings but all Oklahomans should breathe a sigh of relief when the Legislature stops making new laws a week ahead of schedule.

As usual, the Legislature will take a number of important votes during the last week. Some will be forced due to attempts to introduce and pass far-reaching, new policies that should have been introduced much earlier in the year.

Here are some of the last minute initiatives expected to receive consideration.

I will absolutely vote against two brand new, suddenly-introduced proposals to establish funding for a new museum in Tulsa and the continuance of the Native American Cultural Center in Oklahoma City.

The state Historical Society does not maintain assets that it has already committed to such as the local State Capital Publishing Museum. It absolutely perplexes me that state bureaucrats are pressing to build new when they do not maintain existing.

It also perplexes me to note that those within state government don’t appear to realize the practice of building an old-fashioned, real property empire has become completely antiquated and is the way of the past. It isn’t the 1960’s. Instead of building a new real property infrastructure, state officials should focus on downsizing the existing real property footprint and better maintain those still needed assets.

Historical Society officials want to build the Tulsa museum as a showcase for visual media collections of Oklahoma performers. The Historical Society has received donations of these media items which it wants to put on display. It would be a much better service to Oklahoma taxpayers to provide this collection in an online form. This way everyone could enjoy the collection from their own home on their own timetable without having to travel to Tulsa to view the media from within a museum. In this way, the taxpayer could access the service at a fraction of the cost. That’s the way government should work. But, unfortunately, all-too-often government officials fail to innovate. This proposal couldn’t provide a better example. It’s time for new state leadership which understands modernization and the way to provide a better service at a much lower cost using the technology of today instead of the practices of the 1960’s.

Those who propose sending millions of dollars to the Native American Culture Center Authority should be required to read State Auditor Gary Jones’ insightful audit of the entity. Jones detailed the organization’s extremely wasteful spending practices which have already lead to the rapid liquidation of 97 million state dollars and significantly increased the state debt. Instead of rewarding bad behavior with big bucks, the state must develop and implement a plan to transfer the entity from the state rolls and into the private sector.

These recently proposed measures would redirect 40 million dollars to each of these projects or 80 million in total. This money wasn’t in the state budget which we have already approved. Had it been, I and others would have voted against the budget and it likely would have been defeated. Instead, the proponents of this spending waited until just over a week was left in session and then surprised us with the new proposals.

And, that is an even better reason for my opposition to the proposals.

I understand that many proposals evolve throughout the session. But, the introduction of entirely new and dramatic spending proposals just days before the end of session justifies the perception that the state’s legislative process remains broken.

Those who have read my previous articles will know that I am most optimistic about the results of this session. However, should these two proposals win approval, the luster will be taken off of what has to date been the best session since I took office in 2007.

Thank you for reading this article. Your interest and input are much appreciated. Please do not hesitate to email [email protected] with your thoughts and suggestions.