Friends,

Another week of the session has concluded and I’m racing to keep up – hence the Tuesday newsletter!  We just finished a major deadline in the legislative session: all bills needed to be passed out of their chamber of origin (House bills out of the House, Senate bills out of the Senate).  We had some long nights at the State Capitol to get this done, but we did it. During deadline weeks, I often wonder – with sometimes as many as 90 bills a day – how can we be making good policy?  Often we’ve seen the bills before in the committee process and then we try to review them day before (or should I say night before, because the agenda comes out after 6 pm) but it’s definitely not the most considered process.

Rumors abound that the 2027 budget agreement is largely agreed upon by the leadership in the House and Senate.  I know little about what’s actually in (or out) of the budget except a few things regarding childcare.  First, the teacher recruitment and retention effort that came out of HD70 last year, seems to be intact and largely funded.  However, the proposed changes to childcare policy will go forward, which means a loss of about $50 million to the childcare budget.  This will be very hard on families and the childcare industry which has already seen nearly 500 closures in the past 6 months.  More closures will have a cascading impact across the economy and families.  Given that, I will keep up the conversations, negotiations and strong pushing that these funds are critical until the budget is finalized and cannot be changed.

What I am most curious about is what appropriations will be made for public education.  With significant third grade reading legislation moving forward, I’m wondering what is in the budget to support those changes and the teachers who will be responsible for making them happen?  I will be watching this closely!

HD70 Bill Update

Now we flip flop and the Senate bills come over to the House.  I believe there are approximately 400 House bills going to the Senate and closer to 300 Senate bills coming our way.  All of our HD70 House bills have good Senate authors who will nurture them and care for them across the rotunda.  My hope is that both chambers send some good bills to the Governor and let some bad bills die!

Below is a special list of bills headed to the Senate — all hailing from HD70, I think they’re the cream of the crop!

House Joint Resolutions (HJRs)

There were a number of House Joint Resolutions this year, more than I recall in the last few years.  An HJR is a mechanism typically used to change the Oklahoma Constitution.  When an HJR is passed by the House and Senate, a question appears on the ballot asking the people if they would like to change the law.

This year we saw HJRs regarding property tax, electing the state superintendent, medicaid expansion, convening a constitutional convention (to rewrite the state constitution!), and TSET.

I voted no on most of the HJRs.  I am most offended by the effort to move Medicaid Expansion from the Constitution to statute and to allow Oklahoma to stop providing expansion matching dollars if the federal government changes its match ratio.  Right now, the state gets $9 federal dollars for every $1 dollar it spends on the expansion population.  But if the federal government were to only give us $8 for every $2 we spend, the state question will ask whether we’d like to get rid of the match altogether.  Seems very imprudent to me to let the federal dollars go because 1) these federal dollars are Oklahomans’ tax dollars and 2) the benefits the state gets by sharing in the cost of healthcare with Oklahomans saves us a lot of money in the long run.

HJR 1077 or the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust Reform aka “TSET Reset” proposes a constitutional amendment to eliminate the TSET Board of Directors but maintain the Board of Investors and divert all annual interest from TSET to Oklahoma’s Promise scholarship program and the education reform revolving fund.  I voted for the bill because the TSET funds that are used for larger projects (Legacy Grants) such as the Stephenson Cancer Center or the OSU Veterans Hospital are preserved (and will be managed by the Oklahoma Health Department) as is the corpus.  Given significant dollars TSET earns in interest and the inability of many Oklahomans to access higher education due to cost, I thought voters deserved to decide whether they might want to use investment interest for that purpose.

Our New Senator 

Last week, Governor Kevin Stitt announced former Williams Companies CEO, and a Tulsan, Alan Armstrong as his choice to fill the vacant Senate seat left when Markwayne Mullin headed off to run the Department of Homeland Security.  Armstrong spent nearly four decades at Williams Companies, a major natural gas firm headquartered right here in Tulsa, including 14 years as its president and CEO. The Tulsa World called Armstrong Stitt’s “non-political pick.”  I attended the appointment announcement and was happy to hear the Governor’s belief that Senator Armstrong would work across the aisle to solve problems affecting Oklahomans.

Oklahoma law requires the appointed Senator to promise he won’t run for the seat himself when it’s on the ballot.  So, Armstrong will serve alongside Senator James Lankford until Oklahomans elect someone permanent in November.

Townhall

We had a great HD70 meeting last week at the Coffee Bunker, thanks to all who came out.  The Coffee Bunker is a special resource here in Tulsa and I encourage you to learn more about it here.

I provided some deadline week updates and also promised to share this article about the strange proposal by agency heads to merge the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and the Oklahoma Healthcare Authority.  As you will see in the article, the announcement was a surprise met with appropriate concern.  To me, the real take away from the lengthy (!) article is the absolute financial disarray of both agencies.  While I have no doubt that there are significant needs at both agencies after years of underinvestment, what is needed to meet their current and ongoing obligations is completely unclear.  I find this so distressing, that no one knows the actual dollars needed to meet the critical physical and mental health needs of Oklahomans entitled to and in need of their services.

Don’t Forget to Vote

Reminding everyone to vote in the school board and bond elections on Tuesday, April 7, 2026.  You can also vote early, check out times and locations here.  The amount of concerning information in this Stay in the Loop should be a reminder that voting matters – especially in these very local elections!!!

Send me your feedback good, bad and downright angry – I promise to review it all.  I will keep pushing here at the Capitol and you all do the same out there.

Let’s Keep Going!