Oklahoma Senate Making Progress, Hopefully

Capitol Considerations: 

A Weekly Column by Sen. Micheal Bergstrom

Making Progress, Knock On Wood

We do it all the time.

From the sidelines, we want to condemn the coaches, players, managers.

I am a huge Chicago Cubs fan. But those managers? There were some I thought were idiots. Who can argue with me about Leo Durocher during the 1969 season? So many times I yelled at him (through the TV, of course) about his needing to pull Ron Santo out in the clutch situations. I loved Santo, but he just wasn’t cutting it that season.

Cubs should have gone to the World Series that year, but instead, because of Durocher, in my estimation, it ended up being the year of the Miracle Mets.

Admittedly, I was 11 years old and may not have had all the facts.

Don’t we all do that?

We attack folks in the church, the classroom, the legislature.

Well, here in your state legislature we get a lot of that, and sometimes we deserve it.

All I can do is report to you what I’m doing and seeing.

This week I have two bills going to the governor’s desk. Senate Bill 563 makes it easier for school districts to save money when purchasing materials and services. SB 84 makes Student Reading Proficiency Teams (which decide if a student who fails the third grade reading test should receive a probationary promotion to the fourth grade) permanent and requires the collection of data to help us evaluate the success of the program.

Hopefully the governor will sign both bills.

Top concerns for me right now include funding DHS, healthcare, education, public safety and our prisons.

So far this session I have fought to get rid of the tax credits for wind turbines that those in the industry have told me they don't need to be profitable. We got rid of those credits, as far as new credits go, beginning July 1, saving taxpayers over $3 billion down the road. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help with this budget.

We are working on getting rid of some tax rebates to the oil and gas industry which will free up a little under $50 million, which is more than we would get if we raised the oil and gas production tax to 7% as some are calling for, but we won’t see any of that this year.

The Senate passed bills to move about $250 million from road and bridge funds to help fill the nearly $1 billion budget hole, and will replace much of that with revenue from a six cent increase in taxes on gas and diesel fuel, if that bill passes.

We passed a bill to uncouple Oklahoma’s income tax structure from the federal government. It will mean about $4 million in revenue this year, but possibly hundreds of millions of dollars in years to come.

The budget is being worked on continually, and has been the primary topic of discussion in the Republican Senate caucus all session and even before that.

Negotiations have been going on for quite a while between the House, the Senate and the Governor.

We voted in the JCAB committee on the Senate side on Monday on ways to fill a little under half of that budget hole. The House has to be fully on board, or we could be looking at massive budget cuts. Then there’s the Governor.

We are making progress on the budget.

Really, we are.

By the way, the Cubs won the World Series last year. That’s proof that there is always hope and things can turn out well.

Even in Oklahoma City.

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.

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