2009 Session a Successful One for OFRG
(Oklahoma City, OK) With the close of the 2009 legislative session, Oklahomans for Responsible Government can count several successes among the bills passed this year.
Term limits for statewide elected officials is going to a vote of the people thanks to passage of Senate Joint Resolution 12. This is an issue that OFRG has been working on since forming in January of 2008.
“We have seen how term limits in the House and Senate have brought many new faces and ideas to the legislature and the same will happen if voters approve term limits for statewide elected officials,” said Brian Downs, OFRG Executive Director. “We’re confident that Oklahoma voters will be just as eager to vote for term limits for statewide elected officials as they were for legislative term limits in 1990.”
Initiative petition reform was also a major policy goal heading into this session and we’re proud to say that three measures got legislative approval:
· Senate Joint Resolution 13 puts on the 2010 ballot whether Oklahoma should calculate the number of signatures needed for an initiative or referendum based on the last race for governor. Currently, the calculation changes every two years between the last governor’s race and last presidential race.
· House Bill 2246 will allow one year to gather signatures instead of the current 90-days. It also sets up a task force to look at the initiative petition system and provides some protections for those gathering signatures.
· Senate Bill 800 requires any legal challenges to a ballot title to happen in the beginning of the process. This means that time and money spent gathering signatures won’t be wasted on an effort thrown out on a legal technicality.
In the effort to make sure that Oklahoma’s legislature has control over spending of tax dollars, OFRG advocated for House Joint Resolution 1014. It will ask voters to prohibit any formula to determine state spending that is based on how much other states are spending. This would prevent measures like the proposed State Question 744 that would require Oklahoma to spend the same amount on education per pupil as the average of surrounding states, tying the hands of lawmakers.
OFRG appreciates legislative leaders and the governor working on a budget that does not dip into the Rainy Day Fund and reduces the amount of state tax dollars spent. However, we do have reservations about the use of federal stimulus funds and how this will affect future budgets.
“Stimulus dollars should only be used for one-time expenses above and beyond the state budget,” said Downs. “Tough economic times should be the impetus to cut wasteful state spending to make government more efficient.”
Now that the legislative session is over, OFRG turns to the interim and the opportunity to study issues for next session. We would like to see more done in the area of transparency in education, especially Higher Education. More than half of every dollar taken in by the state goes towards education, so it is extremely important that taxpayers have assurances that the money is spent in the best way possible.
“When Governor Henry released his budget in February it was discovered that Higher Education spent $60-million on travel expenses alone last year,” said Downs. “Worse yet is that nobody in charge of making the budget last year knew the figure was so high because of how education money is appropriated. Taxpayers need more safeguards than that.”