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Oklahoma House Speaker Kris Steele, along with freshman Rep. Tom Newell, this weekend highlighted the agenda accomplishments of the House of Representatives during the first six weeks of the legislative session.
The legislative body finished voting on House bills, and will begin the committee process on Senate bills in the coming weeks.
The House passed a total of 260 bills. Following are some of the highlights cited by Steele which were part of the majority party’s agenda coming into the session:
• Lawsuit Reform, bills were passed that impact admissibility of actual amounts paid for medical bills, periodic payments, and caps on non-economic damages.
• Workers Compensation Reform, would change reporting practices from the Workers Compensation Court.
• Pension Reform, includes no unfunded COLA’s, an OTRS loophole fix, improves efficiencies in OTRS, the Pension Funding Accountability Act, Judges and Justices Pension Reform, and creating the Pension and Benefit Funding and Security Task Force.
“We wanted to help Oklahoma reach its potential with job creation and job retention,” Steele said. “We addressed tort, workers compensation and pension reform. The pension reform measure was intended to address the uncovered pension liability of $16.5 billion.”
• Revenue and Taxation includes the creation of the task force to study tax credits, the Oklahoma Quick Action Closing Fund, and the Engineering Tax Credit. A resolution that seeks to freeze the value of seniors’ homes for taxation purposes at the value determined the year the head of household turns 65 passed. And a resolution that seeks to cap the possible annual increase of taxable value of property at three percent also passed. The current cap is five percent.
• Traditional values, includes, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would allow no abortions after 20 weeks determining that the child is a pain-capable person. A bill the requires doctors who perform abortions in Oklahoma, have clinical privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic where abortions are done and prohibiting certain drugs to induce abortions.
• Government reform and modernization, consolidated the shared services of DCS, OPM, OMPC, ODL, OSEEGIB, and EBC into OSF.
• Gun rights, authorizes concealed weapons in cars at CareerTech.
• Public Safety, includes the Immigration Reform Bill, and the changing of sentencing statute defaults from consecutive to concurrent, which authorizes more use of community sentencing and GPS tracking, and removes the governor from non-violent parole approvals.
• Health care, added the HUB board and implementation, the medical student loan program, adding long-term care options counseling and the Prevention Services Consolidation Act.
“We established the IT infrastructure here in Oklahoma,” Steele said. “The system will provide options and give people ways of finding out benefits available and a way to enroll.”
On the health care providers fee, Steele said with the budget shortfall and loss of one time federal stimulus money that the state will be down $300 million in health care funding, so he anticipates the bill passing the Senate.
• Education reforms, established a system to grade schools, providing a system of retention for certain third-grade students, the State Board of Education reform, adding elementary and assistant superintendents to the list of those included in administrative expenditure cap. And eliminating trial de novo.
“If the grade system becomes law, parents and the community will know if a school in their area is under preforming,” Steele said. “Trial de vovo addresses teachers that have been dismissed. Teachers that have done terrible things are asked to resign instead of being fired because it can be so hard to fire a teacher. This bill addresses that.”
• State income tax phase out. Newell, who taught micro and macro economics at Seminole State College proposed a 10-year phase-out.
“It went before a committee but it was never voted on,” Newell said. “I admit that some lag would take place between the loss of revenue from the income tax to the gain in sales tax. When you reduce the tax burden you increase economic growth, and when people have more money they tend to save more and that leads to more capital investments.”
Steele said that the current rate of economic growth could trigger tax relief as soon as June 2012. “That would equate to about a $50 million loss for the fiscal year,” Steele said. “But with experts now using the words recovery instead of recession, we could see the state’s budget return to par.”
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Robby Short may be contacted by calling 214-3934.
Oklahoma House Speaker Kris Steele, along with freshman Rep. Tom Newell, this weekend highlighted the agenda accomplishments of the House of Representatives during the first six weeks of the legislative session.
The legislative body finished voting on House bills, and will begin the committee process on Senate bills in the coming weeks.
The House passed a total of 260 bills. Following are some of the highlights cited by Steele which were part of the majority party’s agenda coming into the session:
• Lawsuit Reform, bills were passed that impact admissibility of actual amounts paid for medical bills, periodic payments, and caps on non-economic damages.
• Workers Compensation Reform, would change reporting practices from the Workers Compensation Court.
• Pension Reform, includes no unfunded COLA’s, an OTRS loophole fix, improves efficiencies in OTRS, the Pension Funding Accountability Act, Judges and Justices Pension Reform, and creating the Pension and Benefit Funding and Security Task Force.
“We wanted to help Oklahoma reach its potential with job creation and job retention,” Steele said. “We addressed tort, workers compensation and pension reform. The pension reform measure was intended to address the uncovered pension liability of $16.5 billion.”
• Revenue and Taxation includes the creation of the task force to study tax credits, the Oklahoma Quick Action Closing Fund, and the Engineering Tax Credit. A resolution that seeks to freeze the value of seniors’ homes for taxation purposes at the value determined the year the head of household turns 65 passed. And a resolution that seeks to cap the possible annual increase of taxable value of property at three percent also passed. The current cap is five percent.
• Traditional values, includes, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would allow no abortions after 20 weeks determining that the child is a pain-capable person. A bill the requires doctors who perform abortions in Oklahoma, have clinical privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic where abortions are done and prohibiting certain drugs to induce abortions.
• Government reform and modernization, consolidated the shared services of DCS, OPM, OMPC, ODL, OSEEGIB, and EBC into OSF.
• Gun rights, authorizes concealed weapons in cars at CareerTech.
• Public Safety, includes the Immigration Reform Bill, and the changing of sentencing statute defaults from consecutive to concurrent, which authorizes more use of community sentencing and GPS tracking, and removes the governor from non-violent parole approvals.
• Health care, added the HUB board and implementation, the medical student loan program, adding long-term care options counseling and the Prevention Services Consolidation Act.
“We established the IT infrastructure here in Oklahoma,” Steele said. “The system will provide options and give people ways of finding out benefits available and a way to enroll.”
On the health care providers fee, Steele said with the budget shortfall and loss of one time federal stimulus money that the state will be down $300 million in health care funding, so he anticipates the bill passing the Senate.
• Education reforms, established a system to grade schools, providing a system of retention for certain third-grade students, the State Board of Education reform, adding elementary and assistant superintendents to the list of those included in administrative expenditure cap. And eliminating trial de novo.
“If the grade system becomes law, parents and the community will know if a school in their area is under preforming,” Steele said. “Trial de vovo addresses teachers that have been dismissed. Teachers that have done terrible things are asked to resign instead of being fired because it can be so hard to fire a teacher. This bill addresses that.”
• State income tax phase out. Newell, who taught micro and macro economics at Seminole State College proposed a 10-year phase-out.
“It went before a committee but it was never voted on,” Newell said. “I admit that some lag would take place between the loss of revenue from the income tax to the gain in sales tax. When you reduce the tax burden you increase economic growth, and when people have more money they tend to save more and that leads to more capital investments.”
Steele said that the current rate of economic growth could trigger tax relief as soon as June 2012. “That would equate to about a $50 million loss for the fiscal year,” Steele said. “But with experts now using the words recovery instead of recession, we could see the state’s budget return to par.”
———
Robby Short may be contacted by calling 214-3934.
