Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time for our community connection right here on k The one you trust
in. Our guest today is incumbent State Senator Julie Daniels. Welcome to the
program. How are you doing today, Tom, I'm just fine and enjoying
this coolish weather weather. Always good to be here at KWN, good running
shoes weather. With that campaign going on and everything. Speaking of the campaign,
a lot going on at this point in time, and one of the
things that has come up is that, my golly, this is a race
for you. You have an opponent this time, and the landscape is maybe
just a little bit different, but really not all that much. I guess.
How do you see where you are and where you're going so far in
this race? Well, in any campaign, you have a plan, and
you work your plan, and you do that every day and then you move
to the next twenty four hour cycle. I'm pretty much just knocking doors right
now now, because during session you don't have as much of an opportunity to
do that. But it's interesting yesterday, and this has happened more than once.
I'm going to the door and talking about a campaign, but finding a
constituent with an issue, so you get out the phone and make a note.
This person says they overpaid their taxes, this person has a difficulty with
some unemployment benefits. And I say, okay, after June eighteen, I
will be giving you a call, Kathy, and I will my assistant and
I we'll get working on this. So you're doing a little campaigning and a
little constituent work at the same time. But that does show that folks are
engaged and they know that my office is responsive and we have enough experience now
that we can fairly quickly resolve some issues. And we've built good working relationships
with people in the building, which is what you need to do with bureaucracies.
You need to understand that they have a job to do and they're implementing
our laws. But when you hit a roadblock somehow, maybe it's a misunderstanding,
maybe it's a mistake, maybe it's something we need to change. And
that's certainly the approach my office takes. So it's a little bit of campaign
and a little bit of helping constituents at the same time. That's great,
And speaking of experience, you have plenty. Tell us a little bit about
your experience, because there are people who are moving to Bartlesfield every day.
Some weren't around the last time you ran. Well, exactly yesterday, I
talked to somebody who had just registered who's moved here from Colorado. I've talked
this week with people from California, somebody from Missouri who just moved downtown.
And they're all coming here with some either close or tenuous Bartlewilt connection, but
they're coming because they wanted to leave where they were and come here because they
see us as freer, friendlier, less regulation, more openness, and so
they're just the kinds of folks that we want to attract to Oklahoma. And
it does tell me as an elected official that we are doing things right.
Not everything is perfect, but that by and large, our government is one
that is responsive to the people, and protective of freedoms and encouraging of business
and growing jobs and stronger families and respecting parental rights, looking to reform education
and make it better both the public and private and homeschool side. We're doing
all those things, and I've had a role to play in pretty much all
of those areas. So it is refreshing to see people who are new but
yes, so for the folks who don't know me, I've lived in Bartlesville
now about thirty five years. Charlie and I've been married forty six years.
He's a retired attorney with Phillips. My boys were worn and raised here,
went to public school, went to Saint John some too. I've got a
son and daughter in law and three little grandchildren here, and Margo just turned
one and she's starting to walk and you can't keep up with her. But
I had all that experience with nonprofit sector. I have really good relationships with
all those organizations in town that do so much good and make Bartlesville a very
unique place to live. Those same as kinds of attitudes exist throughout Senate District
twenty nine Washington and northern Rogers County. And then I have the eight years
in the Senate doing a variety of things. I serve on more major committees
than anybody else in my caucus because I asked for more work. So by
the time you do Judiciary, Education, Finance, Health and Human Services rules,
and you had a stint both in business and energy, you have a
lot of the issues that get you have some background on, and you have
a lot of issues that people bring to you, wanting to improve, wanting
to run legislation, wanting you to help with reform. And I enjoy being
fully engaged in all those things and learning about new things. So I would
have to say that I'm very well rounded in my experience there. I've been
given some leadership opportunities, and what that means to Senate District twenty nine is
that I have maybe a larger voice at the table when we're deciding what direction
to take. And I think that's beneficial to the folks of northeastern Oklahoma,
particularly the communities in Senate District twenty nine. For all those reasons and the
fact that I'm regularly ranked as one of the most conservative members in the building,
to the point that when someone says, if somebody says you're not a
conservative, we all just laugh. I take that conservative philosophy and my sort
of practical way of thinking, and I don't mind what the problem is.
Let's go talk about it, Let's learn both sides of the issue, Let's
bring in all the perspectives, and then apply a conservative political philosophy to how
to proceed, whether that's a bill I'm working on or an issue that we're
taking a lot of time with, or just a bill that pops up and
you need to make a decision how to vote. One of the things that
didn't get past in this session. But many people thought that it was a
darn good idea because it would start small and then gradually built, and that
was to reduce the income tax here in the state of Oklahoma. You took
a bold step forward on that, tell us a little bit about the philosophy
behind this, and of course there's still plenty of room for that thing to
catch fire and go. Certainly a couple of years ago we were doing some
piecemeal things at the end of session, rather like the budget process that the
Senate decided we would fix this year by making it more transparent. We formed
a task force to look at tax reform in Oklahoma. Every state is different.
There are positive and negatives to hours, but we wanted to look at
how we could responsibly start to reduce the income tax with the goal of getting
to zero, not being able to say how long that might take and what
reforms would we need to go along with that. It was a bit frustrating,
but we gained a lot of knowledge, a lot of knowledge and In
the end, the Caucus decided this year to repeal the state portion of the
grocery tax. That was not the direction I would have gone. I do
not want to tax your labor. I would like to not tax your labor
at all, but tax you when you enter the marketplace, when you consume
a service or a good, you're making a choice. Yes, some people
will say, well, I don't have a choice to buy brories. That's
true, but how you expend the dollars that you have. You're making some
decisions. So let's leave as much money in your pocket as possible and only
tax you to provide the dollars to run the government when you make those decisions
to enter the marketplace. That's the direction I want to go, and I
still want to go. We did the grocery tax, and so that could
affect state revenue to the tune of about two hundred and seventy million dollars a
year. So the Senate said, we're not going to cut anymore this year
because we want to see how that impacts revenue in the next fiscal year,
because we do have to pay for government. You can have differences of opinion
of how limited government should be and every time you expend more money, are
you growing government or are you paying teachers more? Are you paying highway patrol
more? Are those good ways to expend tax dollars? You can have that
discussion and always come to differences of opinion. However, I did author the
point two five percent reduction in the personal and come tax a couple of years
ago. Then that became a pro tim Speaker bill, so my name was
not on that, and this year I agreed with the Speaker to author that
again, but we changed it so that it didn't say it would reduce it
this year. It just had a formula for how to determine when you could
reduce it, so we wouldn't continue to have these fights. So now the
difference of opinion is what formula is the best formula? And when you did
serve during the budget shortfall of twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, which were my first
two years in office, there's a long memory of how difficult that was.
So there's still people who are a little bit gun shy about reducing taxes too
quickly and then finding that you have to go through and cut all the agencies.
So yes, I'm still very much in favor of that. I believe
we are closer to finding that formula. It would be a conservative one,
but I've worked with several other people and we have several ideas. Now we
just need to educate our caucus and get people in there who can say this
isn't dangerous. If certain things don't happen, the tax won't drop, but
will make sure that when it does drop, you can absorb that in terms
of revenue, and eventually you're going to grow the economy. You're going to
have more people paying taxes, more revenue, so it balances out in the
end. So that's a long answer to your question, but is certainly one
of my goals in the next four years is to get to that point where
we have that formula in place and then it happens automatically when certain conditions are
present. We're talking with State Senator Julie Daniels here on our community connection.
When it comes to education. There are some lawmakers who are very pro public
education, there are some that are very pro homeschool, and there are some
that are all above. Where do you come down on the education issue?
I am definitely all of the above. Each individual child benefits from a certain
way of delivering education. It's the parents who should make that decision, and
they shouldn't be hamstrung by their pocketbook or the zip code that they live in.
This is not to take away from what the public schools overall do.
Some districts are stronger than others, Some schools are stronger than other some teachers
are stronger than other. But that's also true in the private education section,
and certainly in homeschooling. That's up to the parent to provide the quality and
the kind of instruction they think benefits their child. So to me, all
benefit from the variety of choices. It helps you to make improvements. It's
the same as in the private sector. The more choices you have, the
harder every single entity works to provide a product that more people will want to
use, and that's certainly what we've seen in the school choice movement. In
Oklahoma, we have the greatest protections for homeschooling of any state in the nation,
and we do not want to ever erode those. We have done a
great job in introducing a opportunity to scholarship tax credit donate money. The money
goes to scholarships for kids at different private schools. We have our Lindsay Nicole
Henry Special Needs Scholarship for certain populations of children. I was successful this year
in allowing homeless families to benefit from that scholarship because homeless families don't tend to
file income taxes and therefore get a credit to use at the school of their
choice, which is the program we passed last year. So we've expanded Lindsay
Nicole Henry to say homeless parents can benefit from this scholarship. And we have
one particular school in Oklahoma that does nothing but cater to homeless families and their
children. So it's a variety of things. I believe that our Education Chairman
Adam Kew is a great reformer and he wants to do nothing to punish any
school or school district for an outcome. He wants to measure the outcomes and
then let's build a program in Oklahoma that directs resources to those schools that will
help them prove let's reward improvement. Let's not punish a bad score, Let's
see what can we do to get it up. And that's a new way
of thinking. I think I'm really pleased with that, and having been on
the Education Committee, now for two years, I'm seeing the benefit of his
way of thinking. I'm happy to join him in that effort over these next
four years. So it's the most critical thing that we do. I know
we need to protect freedoms first of foremost, we need to protect public safety,
but we need to deliver on education. And when we do that,
it makes all other aspects of our society better. One other thing we did
in education this year we have the Oklahoma Promise Scholarship. You know, if
you maintain certain grades, we will pay your tuition. We had never allowed
that to be applied to career tech, but we know now that we need
more kids to go into the trades, and we know that you need a
good liberal arts education. But if you know you want to go this direction
and you're not going to be on the college tract for now, why shouldn't
you benefit from that state program if you choose a technology education. And so
we've changed that. We have a backlog of kids wanting to go to career
tech. We've put some money into trying to decrease that backlog. So all
of the above is definitely where I am Senator to Daniels, this is the
point where I say it's time to get on the soapbox and tell us what
you want everybody to hear. Sure, we've talked about taxes and education.
I'm firmly committed to reducing government regulation. I've done a lot of work in
that area. This has to do with the administrative rules that have the effect
of laws, but they weren't passed by the legislature, but we're the ones
who oversee them and determine whether or not they can go into effect. Over
the years of work with the Governor's office and several of my colleagues, and
we cleaned up that particular statute to give more oversight to the legislature. What
we need to do now is to make sure we're fully engaged in that.
So I will continue to work on that one. I definitely want to do
more just checking my little protect the reforms the Republicans put in place fifteen or
twenty years ago. With term limits, there's not as much institutional knowledge in
the building about the reforms. And this had to do with lawsuit reform,
which has been eroded by our Supreme Court, workers' compensation reform, which they
chip away at every session, and pension reform, which is very misunderstood,
but critically important to the retirees in these different pension groups, but also to
the fiscal health of the state as it is seen from outside. So all
those things are kind of not headline making, but they're very important. I'm
going to continue to work on those. So let me wrap up by saying
I would really appreciate your vote on April eighteen. It is a joy to
serve you. I believe my office serves you well. I'm engaged on all
the issues. I spend a lot of hours in the building, which I
consider a large office building, with lots of employees with different perspectives. They're
the elected, they're the bureaucrats, they're the lobbyists. They all work together
to learn about the issues, and from them I glean the knowledge I need
to either advance something or vote for or against something. And it's an absolute
privilege to get to do that on your behalf. So on June the eighteenth,
please vote for me. Let me do my last four year term as
your senator. And if you're not going to be in town on the eighteenth,
you can vote Thursday and Friday from eight to six at the election board
at City Hall or if you're in no wa to go to the no Wata
County Courthouse or the Rogers County Courthouse and then on Saturday from eight to two.
But otherwise I will see you at the polls on election day. If
you want to get in touch with me nine one eight three three one seven
two sixty seven, my website is danielsokasenate dot com. You can communicate with
me there or Senator Julie Daniels Facebook. You can message me there and I
will try my darness here in the last few days of the campaign to be
back in touch with you. And thank you, Thank you Tom, and
thank you all folks in Senate District twenty nine for allowing me to represent you
in the state Senate. Thank you for being with his Senator Julie Daniels on
our community connection.