Steele officially assumes role of House Speaker pro tempore

Rep. Kris Steele officially assumed the role of House speaker pro tempore Tuesday during the legislature’s organizational day at the state capitol, making the Shawnee lawmaker the No. 2 person in the House behind Speaker Chris Benge of Tulsa.
Steele, who has been representing Pottawatomie County since 2000, will assume the duties of the House speaker when Rep. Benge is absent and will manage most of the day-to-day business of the House, he said.
“My primary goal now will be to establish an environment that is respectful, inclusive and fair,” Steele said Tuesday morning. “I want to make sure every member participates in the process because I believe every member has something to offer, has some contribution to make.”
While most representatives have voting rights only in the committees to which they belong, Steele, as speaker pro tempore, now will have voting rights in all committees. He’ll also be charged with enforcing the House rules during session, meeting deadlines and ensuring that all House business is conducted in an “orderly, timely fashion.”
Challenges lie ahead
Well known for his ongoing work in healthcare reform, Steele will face a sputtering national economy and a state budget shortfall that could range anywhere from $300 million to $500 million as he settles into his new role.
“The new budget is going to be a challenge,” he said. “We have around $310 million less to spend this year versus last year, even though I think that number is going to be more like $500 million, so finding a way to provide the services our state needs is going to be challenging this year.”
Steele said members of the House and Senate will begin meeting next week to discuss the budget and ways to make the money stretch further during the current economic slowdown. Some “secondary” programs, none of which were specified Tuesday, may be shut down or reduced in size to accommodate the budget, Steele said.
“Obviously, we’re going to protect the services and programs we feel the people need the most, but something’s got to give at some point,”
Another challenge Steele will tackle is the ongoing effort to reform the Department of Human Services, an agency he feels has lost its way and suffers under a debilitating bureaucracy.
“The agency has grown so big that kids are falling through the cracks,” Steele said. “And, I think, we’re losing sight of why the agency was created in the first place, which is to protect our children and keep them from harm if they’re at risk.”
For the past two years, Steele said he and his colleagues have been going through Title 10, the massive Oklahoma statute with laws pertaining to children, “line by line, word by word.” He said the laws are confusing and many of them are duplicates of older laws.
“We’ve created new laws in reaction to the death of a child, or some circumstance like that, and what we’ve done is piled law, on top of law, on top of law,” he said. “Title 10 has just gotten out of control.”
An independent audit of DHS, which began in June, is now complete and the findings will be presented “some time in the next three weeks,” Steele said.
The state legislature also certified the Nov. 4 general election results Tuesday, made those results official and adopted rules and guidelines for this year’s session, which is set to begin Feb. 2.