Speaker 1: Yeah, we have to know.
Speaker 2: I'm start.
Speaker 3: All you have me. Everybody.
Speaker 4: We plutline shares that had the hard part of comedy
Speaker 4: now as at.
Speaker 1: The super moment.
Speaker 4: If you guys don't go on Ryan God that I'm
Speaker 4: the president Dave Phillips shouldn't get an updated kind of
Speaker 4: where we've been.
Speaker 1: In the last year. It shouldn't take too long.
Speaker 4: I started seven days after the cyber attack, so in
Speaker 4: May thirteenth was my one day anniversary. So just kind
Speaker 4: of a little bit we're at. From an Amander directors standpoint.
Speaker 1: All of our positions are filled.
Speaker 4: The ur positions are actually filled and outside of Oklahoma.
Speaker 4: So I've got my new director since an Uncan Group Armsfield,
Speaker 4: Hanna Schultz, who bolder from Arkansas. We've got a director
Speaker 4: from Austin Waco Ascension to They are cardio bascular program.
Speaker 4: So we're looking for talent both in Oklahoma as well
Speaker 4: as outside of Oklahoma as well. So Jason Popp last
Speaker 4: time we were here of our Divinity Robot.
Speaker 1: Through the month of April, we've completed two.
Speaker 4: Hundred and seventy four cases, two hundred and twenty four
Speaker 4: in general surgery and the rest in gyn We're hopeful
Speaker 4: that USO is one of our new partners out we
Speaker 4: have recruited. They're in our big white medical office building.
Speaker 4: They able struct our first case in the market June.
Speaker 4: So we're looking for costa rules and the strampanies that
Speaker 4: can be done here locally.
Speaker 1: So excited to have that. As we continue on the pathway,
Speaker 1: we had hired yobe gyn doctor Mortis McCoy. Can they
Speaker 1: number or see her? There you go in the background.
Speaker 4: Of course, She's been a great addition to so I'm
Speaker 4: excited to have her. We also signed a doctor Barker
Speaker 4: who is moving from Wisconsin. She is board certified in
Speaker 4: car Are you a vascular and is more eligible for
Speaker 4: alleged physiology and what that means.
Speaker 1: At some point we'll start doing a plation with hark
Speaker 1: Chops here in Barblesville. So we build on.
Speaker 4: These programs, just to let you know that's where we're at.
Speaker 4: I know a lot of you always wondering about the
Speaker 4: PCP of date primary care.
Speaker 1: I don't want to fear a NURTH practitioner and I'm
Speaker 1: going to see a position.
Speaker 4: So we assigned doctor David Campbell. He starts August first.
Speaker 4: We have made an offer and accepted for an international
Speaker 4: grat Octamochi. She starts December twenty ninth.
Speaker 1: Met with doctor We have an.
Speaker 4: Offer oute to doctor Berlin John. She'll make a decision
Speaker 4: any day, but she'll be a September start day.
Speaker 5: We've got medial candidates coming out a pipeline that.
Speaker 4: Want to work here in Barblesville as we look at
Speaker 4: succession planning and.
Speaker 1: Access to the care of the community.
Speaker 4: Cardiology, I'm on the hunt to recruit another individual cardiologists
Speaker 4: as well as two.
Speaker 1: More general cardiologists.
Speaker 4: We're going to recruit a fourth obty in Here's totally
Speaker 4: to round out the team of a cor providers. Orthopedic
Speaker 4: working with Tspeed are recruiting a second provider for doctor
Speaker 4: j Doctor.
Speaker 1: Jason in the community and he's doing really well in
Speaker 1: his first year. Also looking at E and T, pomonology
Speaker 1: and neurology.
Speaker 4: I have a contract out towards neurologist to what we
Speaker 4: East Teamsine Fellowship trained for twenty six We're just negotiating
Speaker 4: the contract as we speak.
Speaker 1: So and then the last and not least USO.
Speaker 4: I mentioned earlier is a succession planning for doctor Fister.
Speaker 4: They're atually amount of twenty two and a half case
Speaker 4: in twenty three cases a month, So.
Speaker 6: That means you no longer have to go to Tulsa
Speaker 6: to get neurological care.
Speaker 1: They also specialize in gly in knowledge of care as well,
Speaker 1: and the last amount of lease you've been.
Speaker 4: Working with Gside, which is Gasfer Specialists of Tulsa.
Speaker 1: They now have a clinic.
Speaker 4: Open here start today, full clinic staff by rich practitioner
Speaker 4: and they're still being two days of outpatient looking.
Speaker 7: To go to a third.
Speaker 4: So if you need Gasser groology care, we no longer
Speaker 4: have to go to Tulsa as well. We have a
Speaker 4: clinic now established Hurts So as our commune partner. Last
Speaker 4: but not least, something that I've been working on on
Speaker 4: the team from we're gonds to the job here, so
Speaker 4: hats off to Jason Jennifer.
Speaker 1: We are sitting for our Primary Stroke.
Speaker 4: Accreditation Jeames haeventeen and what that means is that will
Speaker 4: be a primary Stroke designated Joint Commission site that if
Speaker 4: you ever have each stroke related symptoms, we're your first
Speaker 4: job to go to make a decision on what happens
Speaker 4: with EMACS. So that means our physicians, EMS crews staff
Speaker 4: or all in alignment on what needs to be done
Speaker 4: in order to help you if you're having a stroke
Speaker 4: like symptoms. So without further adom altre sure, thank you
Speaker 4: much for.
Speaker 8: Thank you min It's always good, good update of the
Speaker 8: hospital and to spread the world.
Speaker 1: There are new dogs.
Speaker 8: Coming in and they are constantly looking to recruit, so
Speaker 8: that's great new start for healthcare community. So we appreciate
Speaker 8: the hospital for all they do with our community, which
Speaker 8: you bee with the Chamber. They've been our serious sponsor
Speaker 8: this year, our form series and Relie appreciating and.
Speaker 7: They're continuing that next year, So thank you hospital.
Speaker 8: Just a couple of quick Chamber announce We have our
Speaker 8: leadership barsol applications.
Speaker 7: They are open.
Speaker 8: It is only open through the month of June, so
Speaker 8: they will close June thirtieth, So if you have anyone
Speaker 8: in an organization that would like to go through, please
Speaker 8: make you.
Speaker 7: Really fell on an application for that.
Speaker 8: We also have a scholarship this year as to this
Speaker 8: year's past class, if you are a nonprofit leader, there's
Speaker 8: a scholarship available for the tuition to pay for that
Speaker 8: far and nonprofits which I love that class project. So
Speaker 8: big Names is here and we'll be Radio durn apartment
Speaker 8: that So anyhow, leadership arbusul this real quick race stand
Speaker 8: up arms like this part of this is a game
Speaker 8: the stand up if you're of alumni A.
Speaker 1: Leadership arms for the.
Speaker 3: Es A leadership roles.
Speaker 7: Well, this is actually class thirty five reve going through
Speaker 7: So I to my spent so home if you feel
Speaker 7: very old in the.
Speaker 8: Set the hounds this week on Thursday, and it will
Speaker 8: get more across country club. So that would be goes
Speaker 8: win come out with that to Borida five point thirty
Speaker 8: six when everyone leave. So I've always had a great,
Speaker 8: great spread and this great way to maybe connecting the
Speaker 8: smother chamber of members. And then June twenty fourth is
Speaker 8: our fiacers and perks. This says I knew enough and
Speaker 8: did this year to introduced and it just gets to
Speaker 8: a lot different benefits, things that you could take Advangent
Speaker 8: as a Chamber of member, even if you could remember
Speaker 8: for a long time, there's a lot of things that
Speaker 8: people don't think about. They don't remember, they don't realize
Speaker 8: that we do or that they'd take advangel So it's
Speaker 8: a great one hour and its really quick, but it's
Speaker 8: a great way to just remind yourself of what some
Speaker 8: of the benefits of.
Speaker 7: Being the chamber number are.
Speaker 1: So that is June twenty.
Speaker 8: Fourth, and then, like I said, the summer we take
Speaker 8: a little bit of a break. We don't have any
Speaker 8: other events for the most part, and just work on
Speaker 8: the year of the planning and who the ahad of
Speaker 8: the next year.
Speaker 7: So I'm working on that.
Speaker 8: So I would now like to introduce some very special
Speaker 8: guests that have joined us today from the Oklahoma's State Chamber.
Speaker 8: I'd like to interduce Adam Maxi and the Government Affairs
Speaker 8: and of Oklahoma State Chamber having a special presentation. They
Speaker 8: get all them from the city with this.
Speaker 9: So thank you, Sherry, thank you all for having me here,
Speaker 9: having me here today. It's a pleasure to be able
Speaker 9: to come up to Barbsville and see all these spaces
Speaker 9: and to get to the present award.
Speaker 5: Today to afraid of mine and a very valuable leader
Speaker 5: of the state capital. You guys have great representation here
Speaker 5: in Barbesville with Representative Strong represented Kay and Senator Dabels.
Speaker 1: They do a wonder job, wonderful job representing your community
Speaker 1: at the state Capitol.
Speaker 10: Thank you know, as a Sherry said, I work for
Speaker 10: the State Chamber of Commerce and we focus on things
Speaker 10: at the Capitol and make open home.
Speaker 5: To the best place to start, grow, and relocate your business.
Speaker 9: That's workforce, taxes, the legal climate, a lot of different
Speaker 9: things that go into that mixture that business needs to
Speaker 9: be successful.
Speaker 10: And in the business environment that takes for a business
Speaker 10: to be successful in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: And a lot of those things are flashy. You hear
Speaker 1: a lot about a lot about taxes or what we're.
Speaker 10: Doing on the workforce, when when those things are directly
Speaker 10: underpinned by what Senator at Angels calls the back office
Speaker 10: functions of a business, and that's the legal climate, the
Speaker 10: workers compensation system, everything that underpends your ability to operate
Speaker 10: the business under in illegal climate that is fair and
Speaker 10: will apply justice equally across the board, and those are
Speaker 10: very important to business.
Speaker 1: You heard from from the hospital just found they're.
Speaker 9: Recruiting the physicians, and I haven't heard this from them,
Speaker 9: but I feel pretty confident in saying that the legal.
Speaker 1: Climate, the save Oklahoma is a very important.
Speaker 9: Factor for getting those physicians to come and to be
Speaker 9: a part of your community and serve the community to
Speaker 9: make sure everyone is healthy and can go to work
Speaker 9: and and so.
Speaker 1: This was a very successful session.
Speaker 9: In those for those back office functions in workers compensation,
Speaker 9: legal climate.
Speaker 1: And here's some more of the details here during the panels.
Speaker 1: So I won't labor at that point, but just to
Speaker 1: say Senator Daniels.
Speaker 9: Has been an amazing champion for business at the same
Speaker 9: legislator someone I've gotten to now over the last seven
Speaker 9: or eight years and her time there, and she's an
Speaker 9: honor to work with. What I really appreciated about her
Speaker 9: she keeps the main thing the main thing. And she's
Speaker 9: in a new role now that she's just finished her
Speaker 9: first session as the majority floor leader, which you won't
Speaker 9: know is a very busy and powerful position at the Capital.
Speaker 9: And the line out the door of her office on
Speaker 9: a daily nicness is impressive.
Speaker 1: It kind of wraps around the hallway.
Speaker 9: I've told her assistant, she means, you need to just
Speaker 9: start taking a number, like you're at the knee counter,
Speaker 9: or sometimes.
Speaker 1: It's a long line.
Speaker 10: And she has a lot of patience and a lot
Speaker 10: of grace to deal with all the things that come
Speaker 10: across her desk. But while doing all of that and
Speaker 10: juggling all of the demands of that job. She keeps
Speaker 10: the main thing, the main thing.
Speaker 9: It's been a champion for business and those things that
Speaker 9: don't grab the headlines that are extremely important for a
Speaker 9: business to.
Speaker 1: Operate in the state of Oklahoma.
Speaker 9: And so uh, with that, I would love to present
Speaker 9: Sati Daniel's that legislator to your work.
Speaker 11: From the state journey, Julie, congratulation is very well deserved.
Speaker 7: I know, like you said, a lot of work in
Speaker 7: that position. So we are blessed, like you said, with
Speaker 7: the d with the representation that we have at the
Speaker 7: k State Capital. Uh, we have three of the best,
Speaker 7: so we are extremely great ful. Fall ad guys, I would.
Speaker 8: Like to stay to the second to thank Arthur resenting
Speaker 8: his mom today which is Tri County Tech and representing
Speaker 8: Tri County Tech. To introduce our moderator, who will induce
Speaker 8: her speakers is doctor Danny's ruggle she has she is
Speaker 8: dedicating now the board decades to education. Serving as both
Speaker 8: chairman and a classroom teacher and a school administrator for
Speaker 8: the past twenty five years. She has brought her talents
Speaker 8: and passions in Tri County Tech, where she is almost
Speaker 8: preserved as its sixth superintendent and CEO. Regardless of her
Speaker 8: role can strives to create extraordinary outcomes for students and educators.
Speaker 7: She considers herself more than an educator, she is.
Speaker 8: An educ care er who cares deeply about the success
Speaker 8: of others, both in cited outside of the school lalls.
Speaker 7: Her Soviet leadership is rooted in the belief that.
Speaker 8: We are responsible, responsible for giving back that God has
Speaker 8: given us. She received her education and of her education
Speaker 8: at Oklahoma State University with the Bachelor of Science the
Speaker 8: University of Central Oklahoma with the master's in Education and
Speaker 8: a doctorate.
Speaker 7: In Education Administration and Leadership from the University of Oklahoma,
Speaker 7: so she has us all covered one the most of closet.
Speaker 7: Danny also has a ninety sixth in the s Green
Speaker 7: Belt Green Belt.
Speaker 8: Has been a Malcolm Walbritche National Quality Senior Examiner and
Speaker 8: tim League and currently serves on the ascension of Saint
Speaker 8: John Jane Phillips Hospital for and the Bartlesvieel Chamber of Commerce.
Speaker 7: Where she will serve as Chairman of the Board starting
Speaker 7: in July.
Speaker 8: Looking forward to that so please help me welcome team
Speaker 8: to the stage to AIRBIS Places.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Sherry. We are so proud to partner with
Speaker 2: the Bartlesville Chamber of Commerce to sponsor the legislative update,
Speaker 2: and thank you all for being here, Thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us. You know, I wondered in the summertime in
Speaker 2: June of how well traveled, how big people to be here,
Speaker 2: and I can see that this was a priority for
Speaker 2: you to be here today.
Speaker 1: So thank thank you, thank you.
Speaker 6: So much for being here.
Speaker 2: This school year, Tri County Tech enrolled more students twenty
Speaker 2: three percent, more adult students, kept more students in school,
Speaker 2: and graduated more students than ever before.
Speaker 1: In Trick County Tech's history.
Speaker 2: You know, when a world filled with instant gratification and
Speaker 2: overnight success stories, we often forget the value of work, perseverance,
Speaker 2: and resilience. We are bombarded with images of clamor and wealth,
Speaker 2: leading us to believe this success comes easily.
Speaker 6: I am here to tell you it does not.
Speaker 2: But Tri County Tech students embrace hard work as the
Speaker 2: key to unlocking their future careers, whether the journey takes
Speaker 2: them to additional education, military service, or direct employment in
Speaker 2: the workforce. Two weeks ago, we had three hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty eight students graduate without any federal tuition assistance. Graduating
Speaker 2: without hell grants or federally guaranteed student loans is mainly
Speaker 2: made possible through our Tri County Tech Foundation, and you
Speaker 2: can see who those I call them benevolent angels, who
Speaker 2: some of them are on the wall outside of outside
Speaker 2: this room. We also receive funding from one hundred percent
Speaker 2: of our educators give of their own resources to support
Speaker 2: the foundation, and that's how we can live without Federal
Speaker 2: tuition Assistant. So I'm very proud of that. Last year,
Speaker 2: our graduates earned a starting wage of nearly twenty one
Speaker 2: dollars an hour, and in one year of annual salary,
Speaker 2: we put seventy point seven million dollars back into the economy.
Speaker 2: And I'm very proud. I'm very proud of that. That's
Speaker 2: the value of hard work. I'm so grateful for the
Speaker 2: community that we serve. I'm grateful for all of you,
Speaker 2: and I'm proud of all that Tri County Tech does
Speaker 2: in our part for workforce and economic development. Now, I'm
Speaker 2: going to introduce our moderator, mister Mike Wilt, who served
Speaker 2: in the Oklahoma House.
Speaker 7: Of Representatives from nineteen.
Speaker 1: Ninety seven to two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: He has chaired Marbles Hill Day at the Capitol and
Speaker 2: the annual Legislative Golf Tournament for twenty one years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a long time.
Speaker 7: He was appointed by Governor Mary Fallen to serve on.
Speaker 2: The Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Commission, and he concluded that
Speaker 2: service in twenty twenty one. In twenty twenty four, he.
Speaker 1: Was appointed by Senate pro Ten Gray.
Speaker 2: Retreat to serve a five year term on the Oklahoma
Speaker 2: Ethics Mission. Please help me welcome Mike Wilt to the stage.
Speaker 12: Glad that email about brief introduction got sent. It's my
Speaker 12: pleasure to introduce our panel today and I'll go in
Speaker 12: the order of snorty. First ball, we have Senator Julie Daniels.
Speaker 12: Julie is in her ninth year at the Stay Tech
Speaker 12: School after being reelected last year. As you've already hurt,
Speaker 12: she is the seven of joy floor later, which means
Speaker 12: she is responsible for all of the day to day
Speaker 12: four activities and.
Speaker 1: Having the bills come out on the floor.
Speaker 12: She represents District twenty nine, which the compass parts of
Speaker 12: White holl of Washington Nowada and some of Robers County.
Speaker 12: Now we have a representative Judd Strong. He is in
Speaker 12: his seventh year after winning re election last summer. He
Speaker 12: serves District ten, which includes about a third of the
Speaker 12: US from part of Oklahoma, Washington, Osa, and Nowada counties.
Speaker 12: He again is chairman of the Appropriations and Budget General
Speaker 12: Government Subcommittee, and he also serves on the Government Oversight Committee.
Speaker 12: There's one of the six oversite committees that were created
Speaker 12: this last year. And then in his third year, after
Speaker 12: being reelected without opposition last year, John by Kane Representative.
Speaker 1: He shout out from the South, Yeah, yeah, money for
Speaker 1: that includes portions of Washington and Tulsa counties. And in
Speaker 1: his third year he is vice chairman of the House
Speaker 1: Appropriations and Budget Committee, which is a big deal and
Speaker 1: very busy.
Speaker 12: He also serves on the House Judiciary and Public Safety
Speaker 12: Oversight Committee.
Speaker 1: So let's welcome our delegation.
Speaker 12: Well, normally I would start with the budget, but three
Speaker 12: thousand bills I think that three thousand and fifty two
Speaker 12: bills were filed.
Speaker 1: At getting a session. According to the Chief Clerk of
Speaker 1: the House, five hundred and twenty.
Speaker 12: Seven of those if you hit the Governor's desk. However,
Speaker 12: last Thursday, he guys had quite a day. Both chambers
Speaker 12: worked past midnight and voted to override forty seven of
Speaker 12: the Governor's sixty eight vo We gotn O posted the video.
Speaker 1: Called out some Senate members, and then you.
Speaker 12: Guys also passed the resolution handing the admissioner amount of health.
Speaker 1: Other than that, I mean, it was a big day.
Speaker 12: Alliterations, you can commissions, all right. Well, since i've heard
Speaker 12: the senior member Senator to day, we'll start with you
Speaker 12: on just give us kind of walk us through what
Speaker 12: last Thursday was like.
Speaker 13: Okay, first, I'll start by saying, I have not communicated
Speaker 13: with either of these gentlemen since Thursday, so I don't
Speaker 13: know what was going on in their minds on their
Speaker 13: side of rotenda. I'm excited to learn. But I'm gonna
Speaker 13: start by saying, this is the best legislative session I
Speaker 13: have participated in the best and it is part because
Speaker 13: of teamwork from all of us, and I would say
Speaker 13: sometimes including the Democrats, and yes, most.
Speaker 3: Of the time with our governor on our side.
Speaker 13: And so I don't want want the hissy fit that
Speaker 13: he threw on Thursday to detract in any way from
Speaker 13: what we have accomplished. You know, we did the path
Speaker 13: to zero, We did a quarter cent percent tax cut,
Speaker 13: We eliminated the three bottom income tax brackets. Everybody's gonna
Speaker 13: have more money in their pocket no matter what you make.
Speaker 13: We're going to continue on that line. We've passed this
Speaker 13: significant lawsuit reform. I can think of at least three
Speaker 13: or four things we did that In the entire time
Speaker 13: I've been in the legislature, we've been trying to get
Speaker 13: back reforms that for the main part that judiciary took
Speaker 13: away from us over the past few years. Just very
Speaker 13: good things were done. And so on Thursday, I don't
Speaker 13: know why he vetoed more bills this year than he
Speaker 13: ever had before. I don't know why he let a
Speaker 13: couple of hundred bills go into effect without his signature,
Speaker 13: which means like did you eat them or maybe your
Speaker 13: staff random We know that there are bills that they
Speaker 13: say they didn't understand, but we are there at the
Speaker 13: other end of the line, or buy a text thread
Speaker 13: to say here's what my bill meant. Oh, yes, you
Speaker 13: want to know why I voted no on that bill
Speaker 13: the other day. All these other years they have been
Speaker 13: in touch with me on a regular basis, but this
Speaker 13: year not so much.
Speaker 14: So.
Speaker 13: There was an agreement on Thursday morning, I am told
Speaker 13: that he found some bills, he didn't mind if we
Speaker 13: overrode the vetos, and everybody left.
Speaker 3: The room thinking that was cool.
Speaker 8: There were.
Speaker 3: Mutterings that we might.
Speaker 13: Take issue, take action to remove the Mental Health Commissioner,
Speaker 13: and I won't speak too much to that except.
Speaker 3: That I believe it was necessary.
Speaker 13: And so then he did the video over the noon hour,
Speaker 13: and then I believe got on a plane and went
Speaker 13: to California, and from there he issued the statement attacking
Speaker 13: my colleague, Senator Rossino and his wife, who is a
Speaker 13: part time employee the Mental Health Department and works from home,
Speaker 13: so she's hardly part of any of the intrigue going
Speaker 13: on there. Anyway, we did what we needed to do.
Speaker 13: We overwrote a bunch of more vetos than we wanted to.
Speaker 13: There were a couple of bills he vetoed. I was
Speaker 13: glad be toad, but sadly in the end we overrode
Speaker 13: those and got out very late at night. Again, best session,
Speaker 13: but leaving the capital going what what just happened?
Speaker 3: And was it necessary?
Speaker 6: Absolutely not.
Speaker 3: So that's my in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: I think that was great.
Speaker 15: I've been waiting for someone to explain Jimmy, what happened.
Speaker 15: I agree with the Senator. I think I think that
Speaker 15: was a great kind of wrap up. You know, up
Speaker 15: until the Thursday before, I think that there were a
Speaker 15: lot of agreements made that we were all just we
Speaker 15: thought we were going to come back to the Capitol
Speaker 15: and just just finish the week up and get out.
Speaker 1: I think we were in a great place.
Speaker 15: And then.
Speaker 1: Hiss, he fit. It was a good word for it.
Speaker 1: Like none of us just knew what happened. And again,
Speaker 1: I think last year.
Speaker 15: The governor let pad or nine bills go without his signature,
Speaker 15: signed four hundred and some.
Speaker 16: Bills, and then this year almost you know, the majority
Speaker 16: of yeah, he would take part in the process, and
Speaker 16: so and again you think a lot of these bills
Speaker 16: might have been you know, I could see if they
Speaker 16: were you know, fifty three to forty or something, there
Speaker 16: might be some argument there.
Speaker 15: But there were a lot of bills detO that with
Speaker 15: you know, eighty seven one or something.
Speaker 1: And you know, it just it was it was a
Speaker 1: wild deal.
Speaker 15: At one point, just to keep it short, I just
Speaker 15: throw this in on top of that. At one point,
Speaker 15: a little after midnight on the floor of the House,
Speaker 15: I sit with the floor leader there on the floor.
Speaker 15: I leaned over and I said, mister floor leader, I
Speaker 15: think we've done enough historic.
Speaker 1: Stuff for one day. And then he looked at me
Speaker 1: like this, that was kind of towards the end. Anyway,
Speaker 1: keep it short, that's all I said. So you're saying
Speaker 1: you're responsible for us getting out of.
Speaker 3: There when we did before us.
Speaker 14: Thank you reversating strong. He's a powerful land, a powerful,
Speaker 14: powerful land. I think it's been summarized pretty well. I
Speaker 14: would agree with Senator Daniels.
Speaker 6: I thought the session just went extremely well.
Speaker 14: We've had problems I've witnessed from the outside looking in
Speaker 14: on our budget negotiations in the two years prior to
Speaker 14: this that I was there. We our budget team worked
Speaker 14: extremely well with the Senate budget team, and while we
Speaker 14: had disagreements, there was no one stopping at a meeting,
Speaker 14: no one was, you know, walking out. We sat there,
Speaker 14: we hashed it out, and by the time we got
Speaker 14: to meet later in the budget process and got to
Speaker 14: meet with the Governor's team, we had a full agreement
Speaker 14: with the Senate, which was really really helpful. When you
Speaker 14: get into a room and you're trying to negotiate three ways.
Speaker 14: I could see how complicated that could get. Well, by
Speaker 14: the time we got there, the legislature was all one voice.
Speaker 14: Once the governor figured that out, and he couldn't He
Speaker 14: didn't have the ortunity to play the Senate position against
Speaker 14: a House position. We got down to seriously negotiating with
Speaker 14: the governor. The governor had, he had some great ideas.
Speaker 14: The Governor was a big part of our budget negotiations.
Speaker 14: He was instrumental in putting.
Speaker 1: Together what I think.
Speaker 6: I'm really proud of the product of our final budget.
Speaker 1: I think it. Nobody likes it all.
Speaker 14: Certainly I changed things, but it was it was a
Speaker 14: great budget overall, and I was proud to go for
Speaker 14: it and proud that I had a part in putting
Speaker 14: it together.
Speaker 1: So all that we're going great now at the end
Speaker 1: of this budget negotiation in a small.
Speaker 6: Room somewhere up there on the Senate side, and I don't.
Speaker 1: Know them nor I can even get back there.
Speaker 14: It's complicated, lots of stairs, I think, But anyway, so
Speaker 14: proud at the end. He looks at it, and he
Speaker 14: had pushed us hard, and we pushed.
Speaker 1: Him hard, and I just wasn't sure if there was.
Speaker 14: Any more bend than anybody, And I thought the governor
Speaker 14: showed great wisdom.
Speaker 1: He looked at me and said it, I'm okay with
Speaker 1: where we are. Everybody just excided about like that.
Speaker 14: I was staring at him, you know, and so immediately
Speaker 14: you go, he's putting it down in writing, so everybody
Speaker 14: remembers what we said, and everybody signs off on the agreement.
Speaker 14: But the last thing he said was, plus, I don't
Speaker 14: want you to override any of my vetos. Well, then
Speaker 14: everybody will looked at him real sharp, and we just
Speaker 14: stared at us, the governor, and then before we even
Speaker 14: had a.
Speaker 1: Chance to argue, he goes, well, okay, that may be
Speaker 1: ask him too much. I said, yeah, that really is.
Speaker 1: That is asking a little too much.
Speaker 14: But I said, uh, he said, how about if you
Speaker 14: will have an honest conversation with me about anything you
Speaker 14: decide that you would like to override.
Speaker 1: Well, that seems very fair.
Speaker 14: I mean, he has the he has the ability to veto,
Speaker 14: and we have the ability to override that, and so
Speaker 14: sometimes that's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: So we agreed to that. Carry forward. We had some agreement.
Speaker 1: He even he even encouraged us.
Speaker 14: To override some But then you all know history of
Speaker 14: what happened after that, and I think that we would
Speaker 14: have overridden without any any of his actions. We probab
Speaker 14: would have overridden fifteen to twenty middles and as it
Speaker 14: turned out, we overrode forty seven.
Speaker 1: I was sorry and the way it ended, but I've
Speaker 1: had a good text exchange with the governor since then.
Speaker 14: He said that he actually did apologize for his He
Speaker 14: said he he didn't say his he fit, but he
Speaker 14: said his temper.
Speaker 1: And I hope we have another year to work with him.
Speaker 1: And my goal is to have another year like.
Speaker 14: We had this year, and I don't want the damage
Speaker 14: done in the last twelve hours of us being down
Speaker 14: there to affect how we govern the next year.
Speaker 1: That's my goal. So I texted him.
Speaker 6: He said he'd called me, hadn't yet, but I'm waiting.
Speaker 14: Month of them and hopefully it'll go because really, truly,
Speaker 14: I thought our session was good and I was proud
Speaker 14: of what we did.
Speaker 12: Since youered the microphone and kind of mentioned the budget,
Speaker 12: it was pretty much a flat budget, stand steel budget.
Speaker 1: But give us some of the highlights that people want
Speaker 1: to know about the budget.
Speaker 14: Which starts to set up your life first, Sure, the budget.
Speaker 14: You know, the governor was pushing a flat budget everywhere
Speaker 14: he could, which we can talk about that later. I
Speaker 14: think that may have caused some of our problems, quite
Speaker 14: frankly in the Department of Mental Health.
Speaker 6: But so we were pushing flat.
Speaker 14: But we have people like Judge Strom for example, the
Speaker 14: weather budget works and there's a lot of lot of
Speaker 14: hands in play, a lot of people working on it.
Speaker 6: It's not just the chairman of the vice chair of
Speaker 6: the Senate and the House and a few other people.
Speaker 6: We have our subcommittees. Judge is the chairman of our General.
Speaker 14: Government subcommittee, and we asked them to go talk to
Speaker 14: their agencies under their committees and say who can handle
Speaker 14: a flat budget, who can handle the efficiency cut in
Speaker 14: their budget, and who maybe needs a little more.
Speaker 1: I don't think.
Speaker 14: Across the board cuts is the most intelligent way to
Speaker 14: handle a budget.
Speaker 6: Some people sometimes need more or less and you just
Speaker 6: cross the board is kind of lazy to me.
Speaker 1: So our subcommittee chairs went out and did a great job.
Speaker 14: They talked to to their agencies and we could think
Speaker 14: brought us feedback, and from their feedback we determined, okay,
Speaker 14: where are we going to be starting out with this budget,
Speaker 14: and so then from there we knew we had some
Speaker 14: big capital items that we're gonna have to address. One
Speaker 14: which was the farthest thing from my mind when we
Speaker 14: went down there was this prison purchase down a lot.
Speaker 14: It's a private prison, the last active private prison in
Speaker 14: the state, and the owners of the Geo Group owned
Speaker 14: the prison.
Speaker 1: They decided they don't want to renew their contract. They
Speaker 1: don't want to operate a private prison in Oklahoma anymore.
Speaker 1: We worked really hard.
Speaker 14: Trying to see if we could anyway renew it. Didn't
Speaker 14: We didn't want to go make a three hundred and
Speaker 14: twelve million dollar purchase. That wasn't really high on my list.
Speaker 1: But we worked and it became clear they just wanted out.
Speaker 1: They just wanted out.
Speaker 6: They priced it truly as if they wanted out.
Speaker 14: They priced it it under an appraised value, well under
Speaker 14: what it would cost to rebuild it.
Speaker 1: And so we had to go to work and say, okay, where.
Speaker 14: Can we get this money in this budget to buy
Speaker 14: a three hundred and twelve million dollar a prison.
Speaker 1: We were able to accomplish that, which I again it
Speaker 1: was the right thing to do.
Speaker 14: When it was all said and done, we talked about
Speaker 14: it for three months before we came up with that,
Speaker 14: but it was the right thing to do for our state,
Speaker 14: and I think.
Speaker 1: Going forward, I hope it works out well. There's the
Speaker 1: Department of Corrections.
Speaker 14: We'll take that prison about over and we'll operate that
Speaker 14: through our DOOC. We also had some big money in
Speaker 14: for the Organs to copy. As you do all have
Speaker 14: read in the popular press. It's fallen on some difficult times.
Speaker 14: It's not rated nearly where it used to be. As
Speaker 14: a matter of fact, its accreditation was even in jeopardy
Speaker 14: because of the facilities.
Speaker 1: And I'm old enough to remember, and I was brand in.
Speaker 6: I was so proud of it.
Speaker 1: They saved my dog's life, They've saved a couple of
Speaker 1: horses for me. It great work.
Speaker 14: So we're gonna put money back into that and get
Speaker 14: that stool back to where it belongs, and it should
Speaker 14: be a point of pride for our state.
Speaker 1: And I think we're heading back that direction.
Speaker 14: OU is doing a pediatric car hospital. They had done
Speaker 14: some incredible work like very few people in the nation do.
Speaker 1: That also will be a source of pride for our
Speaker 1: state is that goes forward.
Speaker 14: So we did some really good, big items all the while,
Speaker 14: I think we are very careful to keep our recurring
Speaker 14: spend was based on recurring revenues. We're all smart enough
Speaker 14: to know, you know, spend one time money on recurring expenses.
Speaker 14: We've kept a very very sound savings account, if you will,
Speaker 14: which is a little bit of a simple term for it.
Speaker 14: But we'll have when said and done, after our general
Speaker 14: revenue fund gets replenished again, we'll have more like it'll
Speaker 14: be three and a half to four billion dollars that
Speaker 14: we would call savings. So I just think the budget
Speaker 14: was very very sound or a lot of good conservative
Speaker 14: fiscal conservatives.
Speaker 1: Working on it and trying to make sure that your.
Speaker 14: Tax dollars are spent as wisely as possible in providing
Speaker 14: the core services that you all expect from your government.
Speaker 6: So that's the budget.
Speaker 1: You guys have, anything good If not, go ahead, Jed,
Speaker 1: that's pretty I think we've just doing both representing. Cat
Speaker 1: has found his voice. I was wonderful. It was a
Speaker 1: lot of work for a lot of people that came
Speaker 1: through and coming into the session. You know what the
Speaker 1: first word was, we were going to be what three
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty million.
Speaker 17: Dollars down, and you did and Chairvin Caldwell, and then
Speaker 17: the Senate as well, with their new process, did an
Speaker 17: incredible job of managing the state finances to Shoplie, thank.
Speaker 1: You very much, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is true.
Speaker 13: The House and the Senate worked so well together on that,
Speaker 13: and I think towards the end of the session.
Speaker 3: We were looking at a revenue year over year is
Speaker 3: already up.
Speaker 13: So people who said we were going to now start
Speaker 13: trending down ardon might be headed towards the recession. Our
Speaker 13: revenue is actually up, which means we are going to
Speaker 13: have a lot of savings. The last thing you might
Speaker 13: want to speak to is the aluminum back plan over
Speaker 13: port OFICATUSA, and that was the last minute thing, and
Speaker 13: in fact, the drama around that was we sent that
Speaker 13: bill through the House and then it came to this
Speaker 13: complicated committee that we have towards the end when you
Speaker 13: have to do stuff that you haven't had time to do,
Speaker 13: and you can't change it, and you can amend it,
Speaker 13: but you've got to.
Speaker 2: Vote for it.
Speaker 3: And Governor really really wanted it, and it failed in
Speaker 3: the committee.
Speaker 13: Pro Tim said to me, you and I are going
Speaker 13: to this committee and we're going to sit in there
Speaker 13: for that vote because we need to be there and
Speaker 13: after that vote goes, you know what, you and I
Speaker 13: are staying for the whole thing, which was six hours.
Speaker 13: But we had to figure out a way to go
Speaker 13: back and revote on that because God bless him, the
Speaker 13: governor forgot to call people and say, I really want
Speaker 13: you to vote for this.
Speaker 3: And we have some people who don't like to do incentives,
Speaker 3: but they liked the governor. So we had to pause while.
Speaker 13: He did his texting and calling so we could get
Speaker 13: another three or four votes on the board that we
Speaker 13: all thought were going to be yes because we knew
Speaker 13: he would talk.
Speaker 3: To them, but somehow he didn't. So yes, and that
Speaker 3: money has already set aside.
Speaker 13: It's not new money, because money, but we're going to
Speaker 13: us for something else, but it didn't pan out, so
Speaker 13: it's sitting over there.
Speaker 3: Just for this purpose.
Speaker 1: Good aluminum smelter real quick.
Speaker 14: You know, this actually was not only a governor asked,
Speaker 14: It was a President Trump ask We've all been reading
Speaker 14: about reindustrializing America. Aluminum is a critical critical component to
Speaker 14: so much of our defense industry as well as just
Speaker 14: everything we do every day. This in my three years
Speaker 14: was far and away the best economic development opportunity we've
Speaker 14: had in this state.
Speaker 15: One.
Speaker 1: You've seen them come and go.
Speaker 14: We've like Canoe for example, they didn't have the ballad
Speaker 14: sheet and the capital to really withstand anything, and they failed.
Speaker 14: And now fortunately we've got pretty smart in the way
Speaker 14: we structure these and we weren't out much money. The
Speaker 14: only thing the governor used a little bit of his
Speaker 14: quick Closing fund, which is beyond anything we have any
Speaker 14: say over.
Speaker 1: But the legislature didn't give out a dime on that.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of that. And so we also had a nail.
Speaker 14: We also had two Panasonic strikeouts, we had Bolkswagen.
Speaker 1: But I think maybe it's just the way things work
Speaker 1: out like they're supposed to. This opportunity is gonna be
Speaker 1: one thousand direct jobs.
Speaker 14: I think that they're projecting eighteen hundred indirect jobs, which
Speaker 14: I think is gonna be low. When it's said and done,
Speaker 14: we're gonna get O the toll supports is gonna benefit greatly.
Speaker 14: Iola has come in and they're gonna they're gonna support
Speaker 14: this locally with a tiff.
Speaker 1: They're gonna get money immediately in to upgrade.
Speaker 18: Their schools, their water, their hospitals, their hospital and so
Speaker 18: this we have a company coming that has has the capital.
Speaker 1: They're gonna do it.
Speaker 14: They said they're gonna do and it's been a cooperative
Speaker 14: effort so many people from their utility companies to the legislature,
Speaker 14: to the local, the governor and again President Trump. So
Speaker 14: I think even President Trump was getting messages out to
Speaker 14: people to try to get that passed. So incentives can
Speaker 14: be a tough, tough topic. But the idea here as
Speaker 14: a budget guy, is to grow the pie and where
Speaker 14: we all up, then we can pay less individually as
Speaker 14: we grow.
Speaker 1: We hope our economy grows way faster than our government.
Speaker 14: And so that's the plant, and that's where you get
Speaker 14: a zpath to zero in there, so you can control
Speaker 14: your government growth but totully expand the economy so everybody
Speaker 14: has less of a taxpert. But it's a I think
Speaker 14: it's a really good, good project and we're going to
Speaker 14: benefit for years and years to come.
Speaker 3: I know you want to ask questions, but.
Speaker 13: We worked a lot this year on restructuring the way
Speaker 13: we do workforce and incentives, and my colleague Kristen Thompson
Speaker 13: from Edmonds taking this one. We're really being much more
Speaker 13: business like in looking at what should be incentivized and
Speaker 13: how you should judge success.
Speaker 3: So that was a part of the success of this.
Speaker 13: Program coming forward is being done correctly and all. So
Speaker 13: aerospace aviation has just flourished in Oklahoma, and you have
Speaker 13: to stop and think that particular aluminum smelter is going
Speaker 13: to serve a lot of businesses and entities we already
Speaker 13: have in the state.
Speaker 3: So then you have to go back and who do
Speaker 3: you have to thank for that?
Speaker 13: Jim inhoff Brack, who protected our military installations when nobody
Speaker 13: thought it was possible. And so Tinker is a huge
Speaker 13: piece of our military industrial complex, our security. And you
Speaker 13: think of all the aviation related entities now in the
Speaker 13: state of Oklahoma. They're closer now to their raw material
Speaker 13: always already talk to somebody who's actually a customer of
Speaker 13: this smelter and imports all the product from the UAE.
Speaker 3: They're thinking of relocating next door.
Speaker 13: There will be no transportation costs for them to get
Speaker 13: the raw materials for what they manufacture. So it's already
Speaker 13: having benefits. But it just goes to show what those
Speaker 13: who have come before do. Pay dim of dems way
Speaker 13: out in the future that even they couldn't predict would
Speaker 13: be so good.
Speaker 1: For the state of Oklahoma. You've said it all, no
Speaker 1: I had.
Speaker 15: I I agree with the I love to bring businesses
Speaker 15: here that we've been through this on the lead act,
Speaker 15: I was, you know, I felt this well on Canoe
Speaker 15: I felt this well on the Panasonic plant. I don't
Speaker 15: like bringing these massive factories in and setting down. There
Speaker 15: are three hundred thousand small businesses in Oklahoma that I mean,
Speaker 15: if point zero one percent of those could hire one employee,
Speaker 15: we could have got eighteen hundred, two thousand and three
Speaker 15: thousand employees movement. And those are local people, your brother,
Speaker 15: your daughter, your cousin, people that are already in town,
Speaker 15: versus fundamentally changing the makeup of some of our small towns.
Speaker 15: So and two, I get frustrated when we things come
Speaker 15: in in one day and they say.
Speaker 1: Hey, here's this thing you've never heard about.
Speaker 15: You've known it was coming, you didn't know what it was,
Speaker 15: you didn't know who it was. And I'd like you
Speaker 15: to give two hundred and fifty million dollars to it. Can't.
Speaker 15: And so that's that's kind of how that that goes.
Speaker 15: And and I support the process, but not with a
Speaker 15: boat as far as on that went on.
Speaker 1: And I do love to see business going.
Speaker 15: I do like to see opportunities here in Oklahoma, and
Speaker 15: I do think it will have a great so many
Speaker 15: industries will boom around it having that that that resource
Speaker 15: here in the state. And we spent a lot of
Speaker 15: money on the Port of Binola. So it's good to
Speaker 15: see the lights on down there, so get something in there.
Speaker 15: So that's that's good.
Speaker 1: On That's all I got to say about that. So
Speaker 1: soon as you have the microphone seeing a small business.
Speaker 1: I know one of the bills that you offered in
Speaker 1: the past we got signed has to do with developing
Speaker 1: the trades. Can't you just talk about that just a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 15: Well, to start with, we give a lot of attention
Speaker 15: to growing the trades, tradesmen's opportunity and trades. But that's
Speaker 15: one of those things that is growing so fast organically
Speaker 15: without the legislature getting in the way. And that's the
Speaker 15: work of Tri County Tech and our Career Tech and
Speaker 15: Brent Hagen and those guys that are looking out and say.
Speaker 2: What do you need?
Speaker 15: What does your business need as far as employees or resources,
Speaker 15: you know, getting out to even the kids and saying, hey,
Speaker 15: we expect in the next ten years there's going to
Speaker 15: be a boom in this industry, whether that be drones, tech,
Speaker 15: you know, computers, programming, whatever it is, and we're and
Speaker 15: they're really working. So a lot of times we try
Speaker 15: to we decided it's best to stay out of the way.
Speaker 15: One of the bills I did author though, was it
Speaker 15: took really three years. That started with an instance to say,
Speaker 15: you know, you were telling kids, if you come out
Speaker 15: of college with a better degree, you can get a
Speaker 15: better rank. I started working with the military to say,
Speaker 15: what about these kids that are coming out of tech school.
Speaker 1: You know, when we're rebuilding jets and planes from all
Speaker 1: over the world at.
Speaker 15: Ten care Air Force Base, what about these airplane mechanics
Speaker 15: that don't really have a college degree. They have a
Speaker 15: mechanics degree, you know, aren't they valuable as well? And
Speaker 15: that over a year or two, turned in the opportunity
Speaker 15: with our our state wing of the military, which is
Speaker 15: our air National Guard and National Guard. What we did
Speaker 15: was anywhere you go you join the forces, you can
Speaker 15: get your GI bill and go to college, but not
Speaker 15: career tech. And so we backed up and we looked
Speaker 15: at that and said, what can we do to get
Speaker 15: these kids that are equal, ear as more valuable in
Speaker 15: some instances.
Speaker 1: The help that they need to get these things coming out.
Speaker 11: And so we did.
Speaker 15: We worked with the Air National Guard and members of
Speaker 15: the House and Senate, and we sat down and really
Speaker 15: took a look at that. That's what we came up
Speaker 15: with was was legislation to say, if you are going
Speaker 15: in to serve in the National Guard that during that
Speaker 15: three year period that we will help you get your
Speaker 15: certification and whatever trade that you're after or what the
Speaker 15: military is after or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I think we came up with legislation that's gonna
Speaker 1: be pretty good and helpful. It was enough so that.
Speaker 15: I had all of a sudden, I had a lot
Speaker 15: of people in the in my coming in and out
Speaker 15: of my office from the different branches of the military,
Speaker 15: and I had to do this. I wanted to sign
Speaker 15: on my desk to say I wasn't in the military,
Speaker 15: because I was like, this is just something that we
Speaker 15: needed that came from helping the kids' side, not helping
Speaker 15: the military side.
Speaker 1: But it became so valuable to them by the time
Speaker 1: we got it through that they really appreciated it.
Speaker 15: But again I do spend a lot of time working
Speaker 15: on our ICAP program or paying attention to that saying
Speaker 15: what can we do to get kids out of school
Speaker 15: with a marketable skill.
Speaker 1: That I have to say again, we found the most
Speaker 1: important thing.
Speaker 15: We can do is almost stay out of the way.
Speaker 15: Is that process works itself out. So I mean, work
Speaker 15: really hard to try not to do anything to mess
Speaker 15: things up. That's the best thing we can do.
Speaker 1: Well. I was mentioned earlier by I have a safe
Speaker 1: chamber of conference Senator.
Speaker 12: Some workers COMT and we reformed three things real clear
Speaker 12: workers COFT involving subcontractors, one that requires disclosure of third
Speaker 12: party agreements, and then it was an interesting one that
Speaker 12: should help facilitate more interest in having interns internships on
Speaker 12: a company product.
Speaker 1: So if you could speak to those.
Speaker 3: Three things, okay, we'll go backwards.
Speaker 13: Employers had for quite a while in lobbying to make
Speaker 13: sure that interns like you have interns of chnical Phillips
Speaker 13: and Phillips people who shadow learn are there to see
Speaker 13: if they have an attitude or an interest in going
Speaker 13: into that particular career, that.
Speaker 3: They aren't counted as employees.
Speaker 13: In terms of your workers' compensation liability, and there was
Speaker 13: there's a section of the legal profession that doesn't want
Speaker 13: anybody excluded, and so we did work to make sure
Speaker 13: that this year that that change was made so if
Speaker 13: you're an intern, you're not covered under workers comp which
Speaker 13: makes it easier for employers to have interns.
Speaker 3: Secondly, and I think most importantly, was the cap.
Speaker 13: On non economic damage is not compensatory, not the ones
Speaker 13: for the injury, not the ones that are punity if
Speaker 13: you're punished in somebody, but these are the non economic
Speaker 13: the inability to do what you always wanted to do,
Speaker 13: or paying and suffering or things that you cannot calculate.
Speaker 3: And we had a cap on it back.
Speaker 13: In as late as twenty nineteen, which the Republicans had
Speaker 13: worked to put in place when they took the majority
Speaker 13: about fifteen or twenty years ago, so it was a
Speaker 13: long time coming, and then our Supreme Court slowly chipped
Speaker 13: away at it until they tossed it out in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 13: So this year we were able because the Senate wanted
Speaker 13: these reforms and we didn't want to spend quite as
Speaker 13: much money as perhaps the House as a whole wanted
Speaker 13: to spend, so we negotiated and returned for more spending
Speaker 13: on certain projects that we would get these legal reforms,
Speaker 13: not to say that the general norma right and left
Speaker 13: were opposed to those at all. So the non economic
Speaker 13: damages will be at five hundred thousand dollars unless it
Speaker 13: is a particularly severe mental injury, in which case the
Speaker 13: cap would be a million dollars.
Speaker 3: And then if there's some really.
Speaker 13: Catastrophic, disfiguring, life changing event from which you will never recover,
Speaker 13: there is no cap that still gives the legal profession
Speaker 13: wiggle room to go in there and.
Speaker 3: Raise that those damages.
Speaker 1: But it's just very important.
Speaker 13: Because other states do it, and businesses do look at
Speaker 13: these things. That's why I say the incentive on the
Speaker 13: front end of cash isn't nearly as important as will
Speaker 13: I be treated fairly in court? How litigious is your
Speaker 13: climate in Oklahoma? Are the awards fair and balanced?
Speaker 15: Or who?
Speaker 3: They go beyond that? So that was just a huge win.
Speaker 3: And then on top of that is Scott Builder here today.
Speaker 3: No Scott today? Will you tell him?
Speaker 13: I gave him a shout out thanks to Phillip sixty
Speaker 13: six because he brought me this idea. Two years ago
Speaker 13: that when you have these big projects, say on their
Speaker 13: refinery property or any place where you have an owner
Speaker 13: or a general contractor employing a lot of subcontractors. Well,
Speaker 13: what had happened was if there was an injury subcontractor
Speaker 13: employee got injured, their employer would pay their workers complain,
Speaker 13: but they would then go and sue in district court
Speaker 13: for the owner of the property or the general contractor.
Speaker 13: That's not the way it's supposed to be done. You're
Speaker 13: not supposed to be rewarded twice for.
Speaker 3: The same injury.
Speaker 1: So we worked really hard.
Speaker 13: When the Supreme Court August of last year said, oh yeah,
Speaker 13: that's fine, you can double dip. P. Sixty six already
Speaker 13: had the language to say a contractor or a premise
Speaker 13: owner can do a contract with a subcontractor saying I'm
Speaker 13: going to treat your employees as my employees. I'm going
Speaker 13: to pay the worker's comp premiums. We'll negotiate that as
Speaker 13: part of our agreement. But your employees will be my
Speaker 13: employees for the extent of the time they're working on
Speaker 13: this project. They'll follow our rules, they'll follow our safety protocols.
Speaker 13: But you needn't worry about paying those claims. We will
Speaker 13: pay them, but they won't get to be paid twice,
Speaker 13: which is where of course the lawyers make their money.
Speaker 3: So we got that through. I was amazed. That was
Speaker 3: really significant.
Speaker 13: We gave up a little bit in changing the amount
Speaker 13: of permanent partial disability payments, but that's okay. We got
Speaker 13: our statute for indemnification reinstated because the Supreme Court had
Speaker 13: thrown that out as well, So it's just huge, even though,
Speaker 13: like I said, it's not sexy to talk about. Then
Speaker 13: another thing, if you've got a case where both parties
Speaker 13: agreed that the damages are going to be two hundred
Speaker 13: and fifty thousand dollars or less, you can have an
Speaker 13: expedited action where you agree, we're going to go to
Speaker 13: trial in ninety days, we're only going to do this
Speaker 13: much discovery, we're only going to do wardire on the
Speaker 13: jury for six hours. You all agree to just compact
Speaker 13: the time so that again you get out with both sides, good,
Speaker 13: good outcome, but not stringing it out, which again the
Speaker 13: legal profession does like to string things out because you
Speaker 13: get paid more that way.
Speaker 3: So took care of that. The last one.
Speaker 13: Business courts not something done a lot of places, but
Speaker 13: governors really got onto this idea a couple of years ago.
Speaker 13: I think Texas must have one. It's a pretty complicated
Speaker 13: bill right now. I think it needs to be cleaned up.
Speaker 13: But for sir, there very complex cases where the judge
Speaker 13: is going to have to be a daily manager of
Speaker 13: lots of experts, lots of discovery, lots of witnesses, and.
Speaker 3: It's it's it may be particularly technical.
Speaker 13: You can have the parties go to a business court
Speaker 13: with special justices who have certain background so that they
Speaker 13: can handle these complex business cases, and I think that
Speaker 13: is going to be good for business. Also, that may
Speaker 13: keep our legal costs down in the state of Oklahoma.
Speaker 13: I think that one's probably gonna need a little tweaking
Speaker 13: next year because in the end, the Farm Bureau and
Speaker 13: the Petroleum Alliance sort of decided they didn't like parts
Speaker 13: of it. And when the Farm Bureau and the Petroleum
Speaker 13: Alliance are aligned with each other, you know, you need
Speaker 13: to kind of stop and listen to them because they're
Speaker 13: kind of important in the state of Oklahoma. So I
Speaker 13: think we will be working on that a little board
Speaker 13: a little more next year. Oh third party, yes, okay,
Speaker 13: So I think I mentioned this back in February. Maybe
Speaker 13: you didn't know there are people who invest in lawsuits.
Speaker 13: There are people who actually buy interests in lawsuits, and
Speaker 13: once they do that, they could troll what goes on.
Speaker 3: The plaintiff poor thing may not have any say. And
Speaker 3: you know, I want to end this right now.
Speaker 13: I want to sell no, no, no, We've invested our
Speaker 13: money and the more you get, the more we get paid.
Speaker 13: So that's become a real problem across the United States,
Speaker 13: and particularly a problem if foreign states or entities are involved.
Speaker 13: So this bill says you have to disclose if you
Speaker 13: have an agreement with a third party who's a foreign
Speaker 13: country or a foreign entity of any sort is involved
Speaker 13: in your litigation, and you can't admit it into evidence
Speaker 13: as a way to win a case. But it makes
Speaker 13: the judge aware that you have this other interest involved.
Speaker 13: And so I think we will build upon that over time.
Speaker 13: But that was a really important one to all of us.
Speaker 13: And yeah, tell you what legal reform this year we
Speaker 13: headed out of a park.
Speaker 3: Now I'm not done. We still haven't taken care of
Speaker 3: public nuisance and.
Speaker 13: Forward looking damages paying for somebody's injury years down the road,
Speaker 13: which you can't predict exactly how much you're.
Speaker 6: Going to cost.
Speaker 3: There the way to calculate, you have a legal profession.
Speaker 3: Pushes back on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, turned to education. A lot of education bills, I
Speaker 1: think memory serves.
Speaker 12: The very first bill that was passed out of the House,
Speaker 12: as you're back in February.
Speaker 1: Was the quote unquote Bell de Bell no cell or
Speaker 1: cell phone.
Speaker 12: Also attacked virtual days, extend the teacher pay schedule.
Speaker 1: From five years. So all of the House that was
Speaker 1: to be up the education the House of show. I'll
Speaker 1: start as far as the Bell to Bell. I really
Speaker 1: liked the House version.
Speaker 15: It said that is that what we passed?
Speaker 8: No, sorry, it.
Speaker 1: Really said that the school has to make its own policy.
Speaker 15: The different school districts have to make their own policy,
Speaker 15: but there has to be a policy.
Speaker 1: President kind of took it off for the school board,
Speaker 1: so we have to do something across the state.
Speaker 15: And really the idea is, and I have this fear
Speaker 15: that you know, I know, we want to get back
Speaker 15: to the three rs and stuff in education, but I
Speaker 15: fear that so much of.
Speaker 1: The technology and communication that goes on now really is
Speaker 1: the future.
Speaker 15: And I don't want to educate kids for ten years
Speaker 15: ago rather than ten years from now. And as we
Speaker 15: make those rules with devices, whether that be connected pads, laptops, watches,
Speaker 15: whatever else, it might there are things in there that
Speaker 15: they might need to use or need to learn and
Speaker 15: do it.
Speaker 1: It was just such a hard stop on that versus
Speaker 1: you need to make some sort of policy.
Speaker 15: I mean, I'm sure there are classes that have to
Speaker 15: do with media that the kids are making. Apps might
Speaker 15: help to have a phone, and but I understand what
Speaker 15: they're doing, and it is a one year's built thing
Speaker 15: in the in the in the Senate bill, and so
Speaker 15: it might have this kind of hard break and it's
Speaker 15: kind of like we were talking about it one day,
Speaker 15: kind of like being a crash diet. You go, if
Speaker 15: you can make it a week or two, what you've
Speaker 15: come back to eating might be better than what you're
Speaker 15: reading before. And that was kind of wouldn't step back
Speaker 15: into using the phones or using the technology as it's needed,
Speaker 15: versus of being a all day trying to take a
Speaker 15: test and all the kids are down here on their
Speaker 15: phone kind of deal. So I think both of them
Speaker 15: had merit. I think it's a great deal that needed
Speaker 15: to have work on it, But that was one of
Speaker 15: the things on the bell to bell.
Speaker 1: I'll let you speak on some of the others I've
Speaker 1: talked all the time. Well, I think you guys slightly
Speaker 1: told me I was talking too much earlier. That's an
Speaker 1: unco I thought it was great you all know how
Speaker 1: to talk to them. I thought it was great.
Speaker 14: That's a that's an uncomfortable position for me. But well,
Speaker 14: we'll talk about the virtual days. There's some districts and
Speaker 14: I will tell you that just school districts in District
Speaker 14: eleven don't weren't abusers of this, but some districts actually
Speaker 14: were kind of abusing the opportunity.
Speaker 1: To use virtual days. And when you talk to parents
Speaker 1: and see what really happens in a virtual day, it
Speaker 1: really is on the equivalent of.
Speaker 14: A day of school, be anywhere from a fifteen minute,
Speaker 14: you know, to fill in the blank assignment to.
Speaker 1: Something a little more.
Speaker 14: But we don't go to school as much in Oklahoma
Speaker 14: as states around us. Friend of mine on the floor
Speaker 14: like to say, if his student goes to school and
Speaker 14: never miss his class in Oklahoma, we know what they
Speaker 14: call him in Kansas is chronically absent.
Speaker 1: That's a problem.
Speaker 14: You know, we're working really hard to try to get
Speaker 14: more teachers in the pipeline. We're trying to keep teachers
Speaker 14: longer than our good teachers want them to stay, because
Speaker 14: we believe the best opportunity for our children is in
Speaker 14: a classroom in front of that teacher being taught, not.
Speaker 1: Not at their home in front of the computer with
Speaker 1: very little supervision.
Speaker 14: So I think limiting the virtual days to two, and
Speaker 14: then we also at the same time have increase the
Speaker 14: one by one day the requirement in school, which.
Speaker 1: I think it takes this one hundred and eighty one
Speaker 1: days or one thousand.
Speaker 14: Eighty six eighteen hundred and six hours, that's right, No,
Speaker 14: one thousand eighty six, that's it it.
Speaker 1: But so I think we're attacking that in the right way.
Speaker 1: Nothing happens overnight.
Speaker 14: There's lots of other things I think we can do
Speaker 14: to improve the schools, but one of them I'll just
Speaker 14: came top of my head.
Speaker 1: There were a number of.
Speaker 14: Years ago, of course, Mississippi and Oklahoma were bumping along
Speaker 14: the bottom right, and both Mississippi and Oklahoma took.
Speaker 1: On some very serious reforms at the same time.
Speaker 14: One of those reforms was there would be no social
Speaker 14: promotion if a third grader wasn't reading at a third grade.
Speaker 6: Level, they would not be promoted to fourth threct plan Center.
Speaker 14: Now, there were ways to get you know, you could
Speaker 14: go to summer school, there was ways to help that child.
Speaker 14: There was struggling to get them there, but they weren't going.
Speaker 14: Mississippi stuck to those guns and it.
Speaker 6: Was a hard couple of years because the first couple
Speaker 6: of years you had a number of kids that were.
Speaker 1: Getting held back.
Speaker 14: Well Oklahoma, unfortunately we succumb to the pressures. I don't
Speaker 14: know where they came from, it's before my time, but
Speaker 14: we removed that. In the meantime, Mississippi is raised from
Speaker 14: not even near the bottom.
Speaker 1: If just by raw scores, I think they're in the teams,
Speaker 1: if it's the adjusted store based on.
Speaker 14: The basic the raw material they're dealing with, you know,
Speaker 14: the demographics, they're number one. I think we were on
Speaker 14: that same path and we let them opportunity to get away.
Speaker 14: So those kind of reforms really matter, and sometimes they're hard.
Speaker 14: But we have a responsibility constitutionally to educate every child
Speaker 14: in this state and we clearly take it seriously.
Speaker 6: It's half our budget plus every year, but that doesn't
Speaker 6: mean the.
Speaker 14: Money's fixing the problem. So these kind of reforms I
Speaker 14: think are hitting the right direction. We can't get there
Speaker 14: fast enough for me, but I know that it'll take
Speaker 14: instead of take more than one session to fix it.
Speaker 1: But we are working on it, working on a hard
Speaker 1: expending a teacher's salary schedule. Well, yeah, let's go thank
Speaker 1: you to laugh. I've been rahing out behind it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really good.
Speaker 14: It's a really good And again it goes back to
Speaker 14: trying to keep our good teachers in the classroom. Our
Speaker 14: old salary schedule stopped after twenty five years, and we
Speaker 14: jumped it up now where you can continue to receive
Speaker 14: raises for that last next ten years, for full thirty five.
Speaker 14: So a teacher doesn't get to twenty five and say,
Speaker 14: well I'm stuck. I'm never gonna make it. I'm never
Speaker 14: gonna get a raise.
Speaker 1: No, they you know, people are working longer and that's great.
Speaker 14: And if we want to keep our master teachers in
Speaker 14: the classrooms, so we're giving them and I haven't sent
Speaker 14: them to stay.
Speaker 1: They will continue to get raises up through their thirty
Speaker 1: fifth year now. So that's what that's about.
Speaker 3: And that reading bill was Senator John Fordsville.
Speaker 1: All those years ago.
Speaker 19: Well, also just a mention too, we've passed some legislation
Speaker 19: on high dose tutoring, find finding where problems are, to
Speaker 19: attacking that where it's at, versus just just accepting that
Speaker 19: those kids.
Speaker 15: Aren't going to advance, and so we were able to
Speaker 15: target that and put some resources there, and I was
Speaker 15: really proud to help be a part of that.
Speaker 12: Well, but in an interesting time sending her congratulations on
Speaker 12: passing your invanatory markup Hill.
Speaker 1: That's the elimination of But one of the things that.
Speaker 12: Was a real hot topic of that third gind A
Speaker 12: session to kind of petered out is a lot of
Speaker 12: the bills.
Speaker 1: That had to do with setbacks or when energy ended up.
Speaker 1: I don't think anything across the finish line. Can you
Speaker 1: explain a little bit about what they've important to do
Speaker 1: and then why they didn't get that.
Speaker 13: Well, the quick answer is this is a classic and
Speaker 13: this is when people, very conservative legislators and I would
Speaker 13: get together and go, okay, do we respect your property
Speaker 13: rights or your property rights? You know, I want it
Speaker 13: set back so it's not close to my property or
Speaker 13: my home. And then perhaps that puts it so far
Speaker 13: away that it can't be on the property next door
Speaker 13: where that neighbor would like to have that income and
Speaker 13: have that windmill of that solar panel. So it became
Speaker 13: that kind of battle, and I think that, in the
Speaker 13: end is why none of those things advanced. One of
Speaker 13: them was a quarter of a mile, one of them
Speaker 13: was up to a mile and a half, which was
Speaker 13: just way too much. So it caused a lot of talk,
Speaker 13: a lot of interest. You know, after every session you
Speaker 13: go back and think, what were the things that were
Speaker 13: just huge? You thought they were huge. Well I looked
Speaker 13: today not one of those when the energy bills passed.
Speaker 13: And I think the solar one had to do with
Speaker 13: the Commission for the Land Office and making sure live
Speaker 13: stock could graze where you put up a solar panel.
Speaker 13: So it's interesting the things that start out are going
Speaker 13: to be the big deal and then then they are.
Speaker 13: But I can't speak to where we are on that topic.
Speaker 1: Well it's in the Senate. Oh it's in.
Speaker 3: Now, I better let that up.
Speaker 14: I think title came off and then it's back in
Speaker 14: the Senate and it didn't come back up, and nor
Speaker 14: should it that. I thank the Senate because it is
Speaker 14: it's a very I mean it is it's a private
Speaker 14: property issue, and you're trying to thread the needle of
Speaker 14: what there's this person's private property rights and how and
Speaker 14: respecting the next person's private property rights.
Speaker 1: That is very, very difficult.
Speaker 14: I mean, I don't want to see a windmill, not
Speaker 14: just be honest, but I also feel really guilty if
Speaker 14: I tell a neighbor they can't do something with their property.
Speaker 14: They own that property, they bought it, and they should
Speaker 14: have all their their rights. So that's why it was
Speaker 14: so difficult, and that's why we may get to something.
Speaker 14: But I'm glad it didn't happen this year because we
Speaker 14: didn't have the rook we didn't have.
Speaker 6: The right language, we did not have it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't ready, it wasn't ready.
Speaker 14: But one thing we did pass was by by overright
Speaker 14: was the lighting the lights on the tower. Rim there's
Speaker 14: a technology now that reduces the light pollution from these
Speaker 14: wind wind towers because they will they have radar, and
Speaker 14: the lights come on when aircraft are in the vicinity,
Speaker 14: they go off when they're not. So it's a that
Speaker 14: might help some of the neighbor's neighbor problems by doing that.
Speaker 14: It makes me a little nervous for this safety of
Speaker 14: are pilots in the aircraft, because everything's got to work right,
Speaker 14: and you can get in a bad situation that was
Speaker 14: already on the floor.
Speaker 1: You can get in a bad situation where you.
Speaker 14: Lose single engine aircraft loses power over a wind farm
Speaker 14: and they look down, they don't see any lights because
Speaker 14: they haven't triggered it because they're high, but they're looking
Speaker 14: for a place to land. That made me very nervous,
Speaker 14: and that's one of the bills I actually voted to
Speaker 14: not override the governor.
Speaker 1: I thought, no, we need to.
Speaker 14: Even though it's working in other countries, it works in
Speaker 14: a number of other states. I just my conservative nature
Speaker 14: just said, yeah, maybe that's if one person gets caught
Speaker 14: in that bad situation, I would hate it. So that's
Speaker 14: the one thing we did that addressed some of the
Speaker 14: wind issues of the people that don't like seeing those
Speaker 14: wind farms.
Speaker 15: Again, there was a difference in settive house bills that
Speaker 15: went that we discussed in the beginning, and one of
Speaker 15: the things that struck me odd was, you know, in
Speaker 15: defally populated areas outside of Oklahom City, there are very
Speaker 15: hard against bringing in windmills and then bringing in like
Speaker 15: Bartlesville does, where you take your solid waste out and
Speaker 15: put it on farm land, well, it's a big issue
Speaker 15: when you're dealing with Oklahoma City. The guy outside of
Speaker 15: Bartlesville that deals with the waste from Bartlesville loves it.
Speaker 15: I mean, got a gray hay crop, beautiful grass. You know,
Speaker 15: it's it's not too much, it's all right. So they
Speaker 15: have a big fight there that they took state wide.
Speaker 15: Now as well, I have no water up Extra Cred
Speaker 15: County where they've had this fight. And the difference between
Speaker 15: two of the bills was when the Houseville came out,
Speaker 15: you know, we had setbacks.
Speaker 1: And then we also had a thing in there that
Speaker 1: said that.
Speaker 15: A county could vote like an initiative petition and say
Speaker 15: that we want to ban wind mills, which would.
Speaker 1: Open the door. Already people said, oh no, it never
Speaker 1: go beyond this.
Speaker 15: By the end of session, you already had people saying, hey,
Speaker 15: since you're doing this now, can we also look at
Speaker 15: these other things?
Speaker 1: And we were about to put ourselves.
Speaker 15: Into an instance where we had seventy seven little states
Speaker 15: in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: That all operated very differently, and so we did not
Speaker 1: want to do that. Well, the Senate bill in the
Speaker 1: beginning that I liked better, just.
Speaker 15: Had reasonable setbacks for health and safety, safety setbacks from home,
Speaker 15: set back from businesses, hospitals, schools, and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Well, when it come over to the House, we.
Speaker 15: Went ahead and put our part in it that we
Speaker 15: didn't like, and so and then again it it did
Speaker 15: get stall. But I heard a very conservative rural representative say, well,
Speaker 15: one of these days we're going to have to figure
Speaker 15: out where that line is with private property. And I
Speaker 15: told him, I said, we know where the line is.
Speaker 1: It's the fence line. That's it.
Speaker 15: And when we come from a place where not so
Speaker 15: long ago, possession and property was nine tenths of the law,
Speaker 15: and now we're trying to decide, I want to decide
Speaker 15: what you do with what's yours. It just it wasn't
Speaker 15: very palatable. And so we did get hung up and
Speaker 15: that's where it stopped. But for safety, still, almost all
Speaker 15: of the contracts that are written with the wind energy
Speaker 15: really are an add or exceeded what the law was
Speaker 15: going to be for for step back.
Speaker 1: So not lets change by not passing legislation. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna.
Speaker 12: Skip all of my questions about overcycle bar handle handle
Speaker 12: bars and services.
Speaker 3: As you want, no pay the normal too high for me.
Speaker 12: Questions from the audience for people not name representative Sears,
Speaker 12: Martin or Lambs.
Speaker 1: When does the tax next again?
Speaker 13: Okay, the point two five I believe kicks in twenty
Speaker 13: twenty six. I don't think it's retroactive. And then, like
Speaker 13: I said, the bottom three tax brackets will go too.
Speaker 15: And then.
Speaker 13: From then on it'll be triggered when you have total
Speaker 13: revenue collections all revenue for the state exceed the base
Speaker 13: year's total collections by amount equal to the cost of
Speaker 13: point two five percent rate cut multiplied by one point
Speaker 13: twenty five. In other words, there is a formula to
Speaker 13: determine are you in good enough shape to allow another
Speaker 13: permanent tax cut.
Speaker 3: Here's the and this is why I'm speaking out now.
Speaker 3: The governor wanted a half in a path. We now
Speaker 3: have point two five and a path.
Speaker 13: Now that we're on the path, or do not try
Speaker 13: to get us off the path by saying now I
Speaker 13: want another point twenty five. Let us let this work
Speaker 13: because gradually, over the next ten, fifteen to twenty years
Speaker 13: we could get down to either zero or we'll get
Speaker 13: a place flat where the revenues are enough to provide services.
Speaker 13: Everything is nicely balloced, and we'll say, okay, we'll just
Speaker 13: stay there, and then the legislature could change this. I
Speaker 13: don't know if that's a specific enough answer for you, Tom,
Speaker 13: but I'll read it more carefully and give it.
Speaker 12: To you later.
Speaker 3: Talk about a Friday, talked about a Friday, Yeah.
Speaker 15: It's a hockey.
Speaker 1: Career tech Hey, well dry count tags. You didn't address
Speaker 1: career teck more than the budget. Well quit I could try.
Speaker 1: Career Tech did not get all they asked for, nor
Speaker 1: did anybody.
Speaker 14: Uh, there was a twenty seven point six million dollar
Speaker 14: if I remember the number that we gave last year
Speaker 14: for growth, you know in enrollment growth it was.
Speaker 1: A one time that it was sold as a one
Speaker 1: time last year. Well, they did not get all that back.
Speaker 14: They got a portion helped me out someone who maybe
Speaker 14: in that six million dollar range that I think after
Speaker 14: we took one time's out and came back. They so
Speaker 14: they did not get all that. It's not it's certainly
Speaker 14: not because we don't believe in career tech. I'm a fan,
Speaker 14: maybe almost as big as representative strong of what you've
Speaker 14: done for our state and what tra County Tech does
Speaker 14: right here in Barnesville.
Speaker 1: It's pretty evident for all of us to see.
Speaker 14: But that's just we couldn't fund everything, and they didn't
Speaker 14: get all they after for, but they did get an
Speaker 14: increase for some of that, as it is right, but
Speaker 14: I think it deserved more than just a mansion getting
Speaker 14: rid of the mandatory six mark up.
Speaker 6: Could one of the let's could do that.
Speaker 1: I think I talked to you about in.
Speaker 3: February February, but it.
Speaker 13: Wasn't It was a big deal since it had been
Speaker 13: on the books for seventy six years and most of
Speaker 13: us didn't even know it existed.
Speaker 3: So we're just going to allow businesses to be more competitive.
Speaker 13: You will no longer have to mark your goods you're
Speaker 13: a fuel, your diapers, you're food up six percent, uh,
Speaker 13: just to level some sort of imaginary playing field.
Speaker 3: And so I think that's just another free market.
Speaker 13: Action that we took, and really please I think we've
Speaker 13: got We've got a huge amount of support of both
Speaker 13: the House and the Senate.
Speaker 3: Initially, the House.
Speaker 13: Bill exemptant fuel the six percent was going to stay
Speaker 13: on fuel, but we didn't do that in the Senate
Speaker 13: when it got over the House.
Speaker 1: The House was great with that.
Speaker 13: We just increased a little bit of the anti trust
Speaker 13: penalty if you do try to sell.
Speaker 3: Something below cost. So I'm excited.
Speaker 13: My co author over in the House, Steve Bayshore from Miami,
Speaker 13: he's excited because he said, if you live in one
Speaker 13: of the border counties, that six percent really does affect
Speaker 13: the sales tax to your municipalities. To just cross over
Speaker 13: the border where there isn't the six percent markup and
Speaker 13: you already have a bit of a discount. You a
Speaker 13: had that to exempting the sales tax on groceries last
Speaker 13: year and the income tax cuts we've done this year,
Speaker 13: and we're still increasing spending some We're just in a really.
Speaker 3: Good spot right now in the state, I think.
Speaker 1: And there's only other spaces that have a mandatory back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anybody does not one over here with the state Wood Cosmetology,
Speaker 1: I know, it was a big deal all over the
Speaker 1: kind of future for that state. I'm gonna take this
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna back up to last year.
Speaker 15: Last year I went to that than Skychook at the whatever,
Speaker 15: the Beauty College.
Speaker 1: It was a it was a chamber function and one of.
Speaker 15: The directors of that that school came and said that
Speaker 15: she had people that were graduating from cosmetology school that
Speaker 15: were waiting ninety to one hundred and twenty days for
Speaker 15: their certification.
Speaker 1: So that's how long they had to wait until they
Speaker 1: could go to work.
Speaker 15: And it's frustrating to me working with OBS and so
Speaker 15: many of the government agencies.
Speaker 1: How we have worked to I guess simp simply.
Speaker 15: Digitalives and and electrify everything and make things work faster, better,
Speaker 15: more efficient. And after about two weeks had tried to
Speaker 15: work on the phone back and forth, I went to
Speaker 15: the cosmetology office and said I.
Speaker 1: Wanted to know what the problem was.
Speaker 15: And the walls were lined with the WATS mailboxes with
Speaker 15: snail mail. You mailed in that I'm going to graduate,
Speaker 15: They mailed back something. You mailed that back with a check,
Speaker 15: and you just had people in there going through envelopes,
Speaker 15: and so we work through. I mean that there's way
Speaker 15: more to it than that, but simply that's something we
Speaker 15: got into. We worked through over a year and a
Speaker 15: half working with OMS to say, how can someone say
Speaker 15: get on the internet and say I graduated today and
Speaker 15: print off a temporary work permit and then wait for
Speaker 15: your thing to hang up in the mail layer. You
Speaker 15: can go to work tomorrow. And we've been able to
Speaker 15: do so many of those things through omes our management
Speaker 15: enterprise system at the state because they are a part
Speaker 15: of the state, like it or not. So when it
Speaker 15: came down to it, what they were looking at was
Speaker 15: that board is every three years or five years, we
Speaker 15: have to vote to continue it. And what the Governor said,
Speaker 15: we went in at that, we're going to continue in
Speaker 15: the Governor vetoed it and said, no, you're not. So
Speaker 15: many of those functions are being handled at ombs that
Speaker 15: we don't want it anymore. But most of the cosmetology
Speaker 15: is not how to shave your hair. It's the health
Speaker 15: and the safety and whatever else. We said, that's really
Speaker 15: important to have those professionals looking at that because I
Speaker 15: don't understand that obviously, And so we voted to give
Speaker 15: it another year to work out exactly what the.
Speaker 1: Future of that board is and what they're going to
Speaker 1: be doing from now on.
Speaker 15: And so the cosmetology and barbering and that does have
Speaker 15: another year to figure that out. And so that's where
Speaker 15: that went on. There's and I believe in the Governor's opinion.
Speaker 15: We worked out they didn't need that board anymore because
Speaker 15: now we're.
Speaker 1: Doing so much of that obs.
Speaker 15: But when it came down to it, the people that
Speaker 15: are in that industry, which are everywhere, and not people
Speaker 15: you want to make mad because they cut your hair,
Speaker 15: it was very important to keep it going, you know.
Speaker 1: Charles were taking my my freshman year.
Speaker 15: We went in and one of the biggest fights was
Speaker 15: about a massage therapy bill and I said, man, I
Speaker 15: just can't believe we're spending so much time on this.
Speaker 1: And he said, well, get ready, my friend, every year
Speaker 1: you're gonna deal with massages and hair cosmetology. And I thought,
Speaker 1: no way, every year those are the big things.
Speaker 4: Something of bunch.
Speaker 1: So that's where that came from. Falgression.
Speaker 15: So that's that's what the thing is there is. Yes,
Speaker 15: there's there's a question of what the operation of that
Speaker 15: board should be. We continued it for another year to
Speaker 15: operate it as it does, but we're still doing a
Speaker 15: lot of those functions overdobs to make it better and
Speaker 15: more efficient.
Speaker 1: Probably would you like to ask John a questions?
Speaker 13: So I'll just add to this. We did a lot
Speaker 13: of regulatory reform this year. Doesn't most people don't even
Speaker 13: understand it. We passed a huge thing called the Rains Act.
Speaker 13: So if one of these boards throws out a regulation
Speaker 13: that we think is going to cost one hundred thousand
Speaker 13: dollars or more either on the people they are regulated
Speaker 13: or to the general economy, it's it's going to go
Speaker 13: to the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency, controlled by the
Speaker 13: House and the Senate, and they're going to analyze it
Speaker 13: and say, yes, this is going to cost that much,
Speaker 13: in which case the House and the Senate have to
Speaker 13: vote on it by itself.
Speaker 3: You know, hundreds of regulations coming each year.
Speaker 13: We review them and then we say yay or day.
Speaker 13: But these woods have to be vote on separately. Now,
Speaker 13: this is interesting. My governor is really keen on this reform.
Speaker 13: We had to fight him tooth and nail for him
Speaker 13: not to vetoe this.
Speaker 3: This was a huge deal.
Speaker 13: This also gave him more power. When they draft their rules,
Speaker 13: his office will now look at them and go, you're
Speaker 13: not even going to send that to the legislature.
Speaker 3: You better go back. You're not passing this.
Speaker 13: We gave him more power, the executive branch more power.
Speaker 13: We increased the oversight that we're going to do. And
Speaker 13: I had to have multiple meetings in my office with
Speaker 13: the governor's staff, the Secretary of State, and the interest
Speaker 13: groups and the authors to try and work out their
Speaker 13: problems with these bills because.
Speaker 6: There's more than one.
Speaker 3: And he did in the end sign them.
Speaker 13: So you know, when he said all the bills that
Speaker 13: got vetowed were things that were going to increase regulations
Speaker 13: and make things cost more, we had to work really
Speaker 13: hard to get him to sign one that actually made
Speaker 13: things cost less and was less regulation. And in these
Speaker 13: boards and commissions, the thing is that why didn't cosmetology
Speaker 13: clean up their own act all these years? Why weren't
Speaker 13: they trying to digitize? Why are they making their customers
Speaker 13: the people who work in the enterta that's what gets us,
Speaker 13: because they survive on their fees. They can just raise
Speaker 13: their fees and maybe we have to approve them, but
Speaker 13: then they just business as usual. So that's the frustration
Speaker 13: we have, is that as industries modernize, protectionism plays a
Speaker 13: big role in our state and other states, people who
Speaker 13: don't wanna change the way things have been done.
Speaker 1: Or more yes, Sir, annexation of on land by cities
Speaker 1: now arena all Oklahoma. There are signs all over in
Speaker 1: the northern part of the media guys, no annex.
Speaker 12: Apparently there is a loophole in the regulation where oh yeah,
Speaker 12: we can do it anyway, despite the fact that the
Speaker 12: people who live there.
Speaker 1: Don't want it. Ever across anybody's desk in all the cities.
Speaker 13: Yes, I was originally opposed to the bill. I do
Speaker 13: try to look out for municipalities. Nobody pays any attention
Speaker 13: to them.
Speaker 3: Al Reno followed the law.
Speaker 13: It wasn't really a loophole. It's very rarely used this provision.
Speaker 13: It's growing over there. I won't get onto all the details.
Speaker 3: They went to court. They will win in court. But
Speaker 3: in the meantime people have stepped forward to change that law.
Speaker 13: So now if you want to annex without the permission
Speaker 13: of sixty five percent or more of the property owners,
Speaker 13: the city can tell me, you have to do it
Speaker 13: in district court. The judge has to go this is
Speaker 13: a big enough deal that you need to annex this property.
Speaker 13: But it's a very high bar, so it's probably not
Speaker 13: going to happen.
Speaker 1: Very often.
Speaker 13: Municipalities wanted to keep it for just these rare circumstances
Speaker 13: where you may need it. I talked to Mike Bailey
Speaker 13: says they've never forcibly annexed anything. He reminds me that
Speaker 13: the Price Baseball fields are not in the city. You know,
Speaker 13: they'reright in the middle of town, but they're not in
Speaker 13: the city. Said, you could do a lot of this
Speaker 13: in a friendly way. I don't know why Reno chose
Speaker 13: to do it in an unfriendly way. But that little
Speaker 13: loophole you called it is now a little loop, is
Speaker 13: really really tiny.
Speaker 3: Well that's above my he said, rapacious. M Oh, they
Speaker 3: were in the capital.
Speaker 13: Basically, Mm, they won't get the award for knowing how
Speaker 13: to do diplomacy this year.
Speaker 3: You know, they could have handled it different.
Speaker 15: There was another legislation as well that if the city
Speaker 15: doesn't live up to its promise within a certain amount
Speaker 15: of times for what they're gonna do with the land,
Speaker 15: that will revert.
Speaker 1: Back to the landowners.
Speaker 15: Yes, and then we passed legislation as well that the
Speaker 15: the original landowner had to right of first refusal to
Speaker 15: get back to that land he or his heirs if
Speaker 15: it didn't take. If it'd been annex it was actually taken,
Speaker 15: that it could return back then.
Speaker 1: Would be of everyone's time.
Speaker 12: So I'm sure the three of these folks will stay
Speaker 12: up here, and if you want to ask a question
Speaker 12: or any statement, I'm sure I'm go'll be glad to
Speaker 12: visit with you.
Speaker 1: But thank you today and we the rest of your day.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, Judd, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh I heard.
Speaker 6: I'm going to cut us off.
Speaker 15: We're gonna be thanking people about it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you, guys.
Speaker 15: And remember we're home for eight months now for all
Speaker 15: the important stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's get together while we're home.