Bills, Bills, Bills

Capitol Considerations

A Weekly Column by Senator Micheal Bergstrom

Bills, bills, bills.

It's hard to keep up with them all.

However, for those interested in the bills I am running this year, here's a quick breakdown.

Education

Senate Bill 97 uses money saved from capping wind tax credit payouts to give teachers a $5000 pay raise over three years. It is linked to SB95, which is listed below.

SB562 removes the requirement for schools that put up a pre-engineered building to hire an engineer to certify it a second time.

SB563 will allow schools to hire contractors through inter-local agreements like the TIPS program and save significant money on repairs and new construction. Many other states, including Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, allow such arrangements.

SB181 will require all colleges and universities to provide, in a searchable and easily accessible manner on the school website, information such as how many hours, what types of classes and how many students are being taught by each professor, teacher, adjunct instructor and teaching assistant. This is simply a matter of transparency. I want parents, students, lawmakers and the public in general to have this information.

SB84 extends the date for sunsetting the teacher/parent evaluation panels that consider giving probationary promotions to students who fail the third grade reading test. This is scheduled to sunset next year and I am proposing to extend the sunset to 2024.

Criminal Justice

SB109 will make it easier for professionals such as architects and engineers who lost their professional license through a felony conviction to regain those licenses and return to their profession, as long as the conviction was not related to their field of employment. It is my contention that after someone has paid his or her debt to society, we need to help that individual get reintegrated into society and the workforce, and if that person has a professional skill, let's help him or her get back to work where it's most productive.

SB272 makes it easier for felons who have paid for their crime to obtain a drivers’ license. Currently felons must pay all fees before they can get a drivers’ license. They can petition the court to defer those fees, but this costs money, takes time, and is at the discretion of the judge, who may or may not be inclined to award such a deferral that day. This bill provides an automatic deferral of fees for 12 months so the felon who is eligible for a license may obtain one so he or she can legally drive to a job to earn the money to pay those fees, and to more easily rejoin society as a productive tax-paying citizen.

SB256 corrects an issue in State Question 780, which passed in November and made drug possession a misdemeanor. The problem is that even if someone is repeatedly caught with meth or other dangerous drugs, even around children, the courts cannot force the offenders into drug court or rehab. Working with a district attorney, I have crafted a bill to make the third such possession a felony (excluding drugs like marijuana). Numerous individuals in law enforcement asked me to address this.

Wasteful tax credits

SB95 caps the payout to wind tax credits at $25 million a year. Without the cap, the payouts could potentially be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Obviously Oklahoma and its citizens can't afford that. Tied to this bill is SB97, which requires that the money saved by capping the wind credits be used for a teacher pay raise.

SB41 will get rid of the tax credits/rebates for film companies working in Oklahoma. This costs us as much as $5 million a year and the Incentive Evaluation Commission determined it is not meeting its intended goals and not producing sufficient tax revenue. Film tax credits and rebates were originally set to end in 2024, but my proposal would move the credit's sunset to 2018.

Second Amendment Issues

SB36 provides a definition of a firearm.

SB40 changes current law so that someone who feels that he or she is in danger may point his or her weapon at the person or persons creating that situation without the danger of being charged with a felony.

Ten Commandments Amendment

My Senate Joint Resolution, SJR15, amends the constitution to allow the installation and display of the Ten Commandments on public property and buildings in Oklahoma. This may include monuments, memorials, plaques or signage. It is based on a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision and focuses exclusively on the Ten Commandments as an important historic document.

As always, I am interested in feedback from my constituents, so if you have any questions or comments, please email me at bergstrom@oksenate.gov. My office can also be reached by phone at 405-521-5561.

Capitol Considerations

by Senator Micheal Bergstrom

Oklahoma State Senate District 1

Oklahoma is in a recession.

That is not the case in most of the rest of our nation.

While that may seem like rather bleak news, don't worry, it gets worse.

For Oklahoma, according to the report issued in December by the state's board of equalization, it looks like the state is facing an $868 million revenue shortfall for our next budget, and since some of the funding sources that were used to plug last year's revenue shortfall are either unavailable or significantly reduced, legislators are probably going to find balancing this budget more difficult than it was last year.

Anyone remember that circus?

The other evening I was picking the brain of an Oklahoma oil executive. After all, oil and gas and the decline of their prices are the cause of this downturn, aren't they? That's what everyone says. Maybe they'll be our salvation.

What direction did he see the price of oil going, I asked. Did he think the Saudis would change their minds about reducing production? Would other members of the OPEC oil cartel follow Saudi Arabia's lead? I was looking for something positive to grab onto.

That oil executive told me that Saudi Arabia, whose high levels of output had helped to glut the global oil market and thereby drove down the price of oil, would most likely keep their current production levels low, but no, other OPEC members would probably keep pumping as they have.

Then he said this:

"Oil prices are artificially high right now."

His prediction, oil which was selling at that time for about $52 a barrel, will level out at about $42 to $45 a barrel.

If his prediction is correct, some Oklahoma producers will probably shut down or reduce production. If his prediction is correct, oil is not going to save us from the budget mess we now face.

We have to find another answer.

Some will argue that the answer is to just keep cutting waste.

The problem is that we've already done that. Sure, there's certainly more inefficiencies we can fix, some duplication of services that need to be eliminated, and some tax credits that must be modified and in some cases eliminated. I have a bill, SB41, to get rid of tax credits for the film industry, and another bill, SB95, which caps the payouts on wind tax credits at $25 million a year. (The Incentive Evaluation Commission has determined that both of those credits need to be stopped.)

And while doing things like what I suggest in the bills above will help us to fund things like a teacher raise (that's my bill SB97), it cannot fix our budget shortfall.

We just cannot cut our way to a balanced budget and meet the very real needs of Oklahoma's citizens. Which is why we will have to find ways to increase revenue.

I suggest we start by not giving away current revenue. We must change the trigger for, or do away with, the next income tax cut.

I am a conservative Republican and I am no fan of taxes, but everyone who has to do a family budget knows you don't try to eliminate your source of income when you have bills to pay. Well, that's exactly what the legislature did last session when it allowed the last tax cut to go into effect and drain $140 million from the state's revenue stream when it had a $1.3 billion revenue shortfall.

Does anyone else see a problem there?

So, let's use some common sense.

How about this? Let's have a production tax on the electricity produced in Oklahoma by wind farms.

Right now, the majority of our electricity produced by wind is exported out of state, and 93% of the firms responsible for that production are either owned by out of state firms or companies in other countries like South Korea. When the "Clean Line" transmission line from the panhandle to Tennessee goes online, 85% or more of the electricity produced by wind in Oklahoma will be going out of state.

Oklahomans, who have been subsidizing wind production, will get nothing for that as things stand now.

Oil and gas have a production tax. Why not electricity produced by wind?

It's certainly something worth considering.