The Tulsa-area OneVoice agenda released Thursday seems an aggressive one given the outlook for the legislative session that begins Monday.
The agenda calls for more money for education, a state bond issue to build the Oklahoma Museum of Popular Culture in Tulsa and a precedent-setting annual appropriation for the Oklahoma State University Medical Center.
OneVoice is a regional advocacy effort involving more than 60 partners and led by the Tulsa Regional Chamber.
The agenda’s priorities include preservation and expansion of Insure Oklahoma — a program increasingly subject to federal whim, the physician shortage, the Gilcrease Expressway, municipal revenue diversification, a feasibility study for a south Tulsa County bridge, Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology funding and more money for the discretionary economic development account known as the Quick Action Closing Fund.
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Few if any of those are likely to be immediate hits with an already tight-fisted Legislature that is expected to have around $170 million less to appropriate this year than it did last.
At the same time, there is an effort, especially in the House of Representatives, to reduce the top state income tax rate and make permanent a $200 milion-a-year tax break for horizontal oil and gas drilling.
“It looks like a Democratic agenda to me,” said Senate Minority Leader Sean Burrage, D-Claremore. “So if you’re asking us to support this, we do. But we have to be mindful and careful as we go forward in this legislative session, as we look at all the measures to try to decrease revenue to the state of Oklahoma. … All of these (require) money or appropriations or a bond issue.”
Senate President Pro Tem Brian Bingman offered little hope of a bond issue for OKPOP, the nickname of the proposed pop culture museum. He alluded to House opposition to any kind of new debt — a position Speaker T.W. Shannon is campaigning for U.S. Senate on — and suggested that other projects, including the Capitol and the American Indian Cultural Center in Oklahoma City, are likely to take priority.
The OneVoice federal priorities are headed by Arkansas River Corridor improvements, the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System and graduate medical education.
State priorities specific to the Tulsa Regional Chamber are led by an appropriation for the University of Oklahoma Tisdale Speciality Clinic in north Tulsa, uncompensated services by the Northeastern State University optometric program and transportation funding.
Its federal priorities include workforce training, the Brownfields program and cost/benefit analysis of regulations.
