To the Editor:
Serving as a legislator from Pottawatomie County made me aware of the wisdom of the men and women who wrote the Constitution of the State of Oklahoma. A document that is designed to give the citizens of Oklahoma the ability to control the greed of corporate interest and the ability of the legislature and elected county and city officials to obligate the people they represent with debt.
Article 10, Section 25 is titled, Authorization of debt---Annual tax--- Submission to voters---Final passage, and reads:
Except the debts specified in sections twenty-three and twenty-four of this article, no debts shall be hereafter contracted by or on behalf of this State, unless such debt shall be authorized by law for some work or object, to be distinctly specified therein; and such law shall impose and provide for the collection of a direct annual tax to pay, and sufficient to pay, the interest on such debt within twenty-five years from the time of the contracting thereof. No such law shall take effect until it shall, at a general election, have been submitted to the people and have received a majority of all the votes cast for and against it at such election. On the final passage of such bill in either House of the legislature, the question shall be taken by yeas and nays, to be duly entered on the journals thereof, and shall be: “Shall this bill pass, and ought the same to receive the sanction of the people?”
The pending bond issues for Wannete and the county library system meet the provisions of Article 10, Section 24 of the Constitution.
The legislature cut taxes two years ago and is now faced with a status quo budget that is unable to provide the necessary funds for Oklahoma’s aging infrastructure, education, health care, etc;
The legislature is now considering a bond issue to supplement the status–quo budget----without a designated tax to cover the cost of the bonds and without submitting it to a vote of the people, this is clearly a violation of the Oklahoma Constitution.
Oklahomans should overrule the Oklahoma Supreme Court and demand that any and every bond issue submitted by the legislature meet the provisions of Article 10, Section 24 of the Oklahoma Constitution.
James B. Townsend,
Shawnee
