Legislature adjourns
The second session of the 59th Oklahoma Legislature has officially adjourned.
We accomplished a few good things this year.
We cut the state’s portion of the grocery tax – 4.5%, which takes effect in August. Counties and cities can still charge their portion of the tax, but this should grant Oklahomans some relief.
We stopped any potential move toward ranked-choice voting, which makes voting more confusing and has delayed election results everywhere it has been tried. It also would be a great expense to the state to switch to this cumbersome method.
We also passed the Women’s Bill of Rights, which clearly defines women and men and keeps women safe in places like public bathrooms, school locker rooms or women’s only prisons. You would think this would be common sense, but all the talk about gender fluidity brought the necessity for this bill.
I was happy to secure final passage of Senate Bill 426, which prohibits the state from enforcing any mandates or recommendations issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), or the World Economic Forum (WEF).
This bill ensures the state will not compel its residents to adhere to directives related to masks, vaccines, medical testing, or the gathering of public or private information. It safeguards the liberties and rights of Oklahomans from mandates imposed by these international organizations. I had many constituents come up and talk to me about this bill, and I’m glad it passed. I’m very hopeful the governor will sign it into law. He already sent a letter to the Biden Administration earlier this month along with 23 other governors opposing proposed amendments to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR) and a New Pandemic Treaty that would grant the WHO unconstitutional power over Americans.
Also last week, we passed a joint resolution that submits to a vote of the people of Oklahoma a constitutional amendment clarifying that only citizens of the United States are qualified to vote in this state. This will protect our elections from people who are being allowed into our country illegally by the Biden Administration.
We passed a $12.47 billion budget last week, which appropriates about 2.2% more to many state agencies in Fiscal Year 2025 than in 2024. Budget leaders in the House touted how fiscally conservative this budget is – we only appropriated 88.9% of the money we are authorized to spend – saving the remainder for the proverbial rainy day.
We were unable to get the Senate to agree to cut income taxes, but there was much fanfare over the grocery tax being the largest single-year tax cut in state history. I reminded my colleagues, however, that we were able to achieve this “historic” tax cut only because back in 2018 we historically raised taxes on gross production of oil and gas, cigarettes, at the gas pump and in other areas.
Over the past eight years, our state budgets have gone from about $6 billion to $13 billion. It’s important to remember how that happened.
I also questioned several items for which funding was secured, but that didn’t go through the normal appropriations’ process. With all the talk about transparency this year, I’m just trying to keep us honest.
Even though we’ve adjourned from our session, I am still fully available to my constituents. Feel free to continue to call my Capitol office at (405) 557-7413 or email me at [email protected].
Rick West serves District 3 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. His district includes part of LeFlore County.
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