The 2024 Oklahoma legislative session is over, concluding one day ahead of the legally-mandated deadline.
TRANSCRIPT
Dick Pryor: This is Capitol Insider - taking you inside politics, policy and government in Oklahoma. I'm Dick Pryor with Quorum Call publisher Shawn Ashley. Shawn, the legislature has adjourned sine die – concluding a tumultuous session that saw the state budget for fiscal year 2025 come together in the final days. Once an agreement was reached, the budget bills moved quickly.
Shawn Ashley: They did. The Joint Committees on Appropriations and Budget met last Monday on Memorial Day, and the bills were on the House and Senate floors for votes Tuesday and Thursday. The legislature even used bills carried over from the 2023 session. Why is that important? It meant one of the minimum of five days that is required to pass a bill had already gone by, and that allowed lawmakers to cast their final votes on Thursday, instead of having to wait until Friday.
Dick Pryor: Action comes fast in the last hours of the session, and rules tend to mean little as lawmakers rush to finish their work. Case in point. The House and Senate passed and sent to the governor a joint resolution that was not even brought up before legislators until Thursday, the last day of the session. How did that happen?
Shawn Ashley: It's something I've never seen before. The House and Senate suspended a number of each chamber's rules and joint rules in order to hear Senate Joint Resolution 23, which calls for a vote of the people on a constitutional amendment that would permit only citizens of the United States to vote in Oklahoma elections. The resolution was filed in August. It did not receive a Senate committee hearing and was not heard on the Senate floor in March, or in a House committee or the House floor until it was taken up on Thursday. Instead, that's when it was considered by both the full House and the full Senate on the final day of the legislative session and will be on a ballot later this year.
Dick Pryor: There's been a lot of talk about transparency this year. Are lawmakers concerned about how it looks for the people who pass our laws, ignoring their own rules?
Shawn Ashley: Yes. Senate Minority Leader Kay Floyd said, “I don't want us to be a body that doesn't care about the rules. That doesn't care about constitutionality.” And she added, “we have rules, and we have procedures that we have to follow. We suspended six rules to be able to push this through when we've had four months to do it. Is that the kind of body we're going to become?”
Dick Pryor: A bill that was under consideration for more than three years - one that reclassifies over 2,000 felony crimes - hit the House floor Wednesday and is now on the governor's desk. Where did that bill come from?
Shawn Ashley: That bill is a modified version of recommendations made by the Criminal Justice Reclassification Coordination Council. Now, that council was created in 2018, six years ago, to review Oklahoma's criminal code and make recommendations regarding the classification of felonies into appropriate categories, listing similar crimes with other similar crimes. The council also recommended adjustments in sentences so that crimes within a category had similar or escalating punishments. The council made its recommendations in 2021 - three years ago - and a version of those were put into a bill in 2022, but it did not advance. A new version of the bill, House Bill 1792, was introduced in 2023. It passed the House and Senate in different forms. So it went to conference, where it sat for a year before the final language was written and passed this last week.
Dick Pryor: We heard throughout the session that the House and Senate would not come together to override any of Governor Stitt's vetoes, but they did in the last week, when the two houses voted to override Stitt's veto of a bill relating to police pensions. Why did lawmakers come together on that override vote?
Shawn Ashley: Well, Senate Bill 102 will increase retirement benefits for local law enforcement officers. It also increases their contributions and their employer’s contributions to the retirement system. And it appeared to be the encouragement and pressure from those law enforcement officers from across the state that led lawmakers to override the veto. A large group of them were at the Capitol on Wednesday urging lawmakers to do just that. The Senate acted first, and many of those officers sat in the House gallery for several hours, waiting for that chamber to take up the override, which it eventually did.
Dick Pryor: With the session over, what happens next at the Capitol?
Shawn Ashley: Well, lawmakers may not be meeting, but I would argue the session is not totally over. Governor Stitt has until June 14th to act on the bills that were passed during the final week, including those implementing the fiscal year 2025 budget.
Dick Pryor: Thank you. Shawn.
Shawn Ashley: You're very welcome.
Dick Pryor: And that's Capitol Insider. Until next time, with Shawn Ashley, I'm Dick Pryor.
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