Interested citizens packed into the 612 Community Center on Thursday evening to watch the OKC premiere of Oklahoma Shakedown, a documentary by Taylor Mullins about ongoing earthquake activity in the state. (William W. Savage III)
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Reports indicate that the bill requiring Oklahoma voters to subscribe to a newspaper was filed by Rep. Ben Sherrer (D-Chouteau) as a “joke.” As a result, many people reacting online have chastised the term-limited representative for wasting time with jokes while the state faces a massive revenue failure, a budget shortfall and a teacher shortage.
While it’s clear Sherrer should have known his bill would cause an uproar, and while it’s even clearer that saying he’s filing “joke” legislation would offend the voting public, Sherrer’s actions provide insight into how irrelevant much of the Legislature’s early work ultimately is.
As of Sunday, more than 3,400 bills are active heading into Oklahoma’s 2016 legislative session. The Legislature convenes for two years at a time, meaning about one-third of those bills are leftover from the 2015 session when they were not heard.
You might recall that we ran a piece about 2015 legislation that took effect Nov. 1, and you might also recall that Sen. David Holt (R-OKC) has been calling for the Legislature’s two-year terms to be broken into parts: one year for only the budget, and the second year only for substantive language changes to state statutes.
Rep. Sherrer’s joke gives credence to those like Holt who believe too much legislative time is spent going through rigamarole surrounding statute-change proposals year after year.
The fact that so much filed legislation is actually duplicative only bolsters Holt’s argument. You might also recall how we wrote about a 2015 proposal that would theoretically encourage retired teachers to jump back into the classroom. That proposal went nowhere (though it remains active for the 2016 session) despite dozens of versions of the bill being filed by legislators on both sides of the aisle.
Additionally, anyone who has worked the Oklahoma Capitol’s fourth-floor rotunda as either a journalist, a politician or a lobbyist likely has heard a consistent rumor at the beginning of each session: Occasionally, contract lobbyists will ask friendly legislators to file bills negatively pertaining to the interests of their clients so as to keep their contracts — and paychecks — “necessary.” These few and nefarious offenders fight like hell to kill a bill they actually created, or so the stories go.
In all, this political theater serves to feed what is more or less a Lawmaking Industry, and efforts like Holt’s to trim the play from three acts to two threaten the status quo.
Efforts like Sherrer’s — unwittingly, perhaps — also fuel the public’s perception that much of what happens at 23rd and Lincoln actually is a “joke.”
While Sherrer can be forgiven for trying to have a little fun at the end of his 12-year career — ended only by specious term limits and not by voters in his district requesting change — the other ineffective practices of the Oklahoma Legislature as a whole deserve ridicule.
Perhaps that is why the official talking points of legislative leaders and the governor’s office continue to promote Oklahoma’s budget problems as a “tremendous opportunity.” Left to the cozy notion of a flat budget, lawmakers will jibber, jabber and joke their way through countless sessions without reforming, say, how off-the-top money is appropriated or how the Legislature spends its time or taxpayers’ money.
If legislators want to exert some of their energy on jokes, they can always submit content to NonDoc’s Sundaze feature.
The public is assuredly eager to bust a gut with laughter.
