Where the cow eats the cabbage

By Rep. Brian Renegar, DVM
Special to the News-Capital

May 10, 2008 01:15 pm

— This week all of our important bills are in conference committees. We are not yet voting on any earth-shattering legislation. This allows me to comment on the legislative process as to what is perceived as happening and what really is happening.
In a typical session we will read and vote on about 2,000 bills. In reality, only about 130 of those bills will be signed into law. With this year being an election year there are a lot of bills being presented that really don’t change anything. Rather, these bills allow the author to go back to his district and say he did something. A good example of this is a law to allow faith-based groups to minister to inmates at all of the state’s correctional facilities which sounds good, but guess what, when the author asked the Department of Corrections director what he thought, his response was, this is fine but we have been allowing this for at least 15 years. There are a lot of bills that are in this category.
Another observation is that a lot of really good bills that are brought up for consideration are authored by the minority party and killed because of politics. When this happens you have to realize that the voices of the people that live in the district of that minority member are not being heard. This is politics, but not good policy.
Last year the State paid $880,000 for a prison audit which produced 180 recommendations. Guess what? We have not passed one piece of legislation that addressed those recommendations. Now we are going to pay a similar amount to have an outside audit for the Department of Human Services.
The really big injustice is that we the legislature have let slip by is the underfunding of our county and state road and bridge programs, lack of raises to state employees, lack of raises to our school support and educators and a cost of living increases to our retired state employees and educators. But guess what? In the last three weeks we have given nearly $275 million in tax breaks to large corporations. Do you know how to spell corporate welfare?
We are going to try and remedy these shortcomings by passing a mega bond which reports to be around $400 million that we the taxpayers will have to pay back plus interest. The only reason this legislator has any interest in this package would be if the Sardis Lake payoff is included. If we don’t pay off Sardis, I don’t want a federal judge to be in control of the sale of this valuable natural resource.
SB 2458 passed the House along party lines, which means I voted against it. This measure requires an expert witness to swear that a case has merit before it can be filed at the courthouse. A wealthy person would have no problem coming up with several thousand dollars to pay that expert witness. We can not say the same for the average citizen, who is already stretching budgets to pay $3.50 per gallon for gasoline. This bill closes the courthouse doors to the average citizen. Gov. Brad Henry promptly announced that he will veto this bill and all 44 of the House Democrats will support him and sustain his veto.
I realize this article may seem somewhat pessimistic, but I like to report how the “cow eats the cabbage.” Yet I am still optimistic and will continue to “fight the good fight” for all of you. God bless each and everyone of you.
District 17 State Rep. Brian Renegar: House of Representatives, 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Room 326, Oklahoma City, OK, 73105. Capitol office 405-557-7381.