Legislature limps toward finish line as Friday adjournment looms

The Legislature must adjourn by 5 p.m. Friday.

The Oklahoma House on Friday is expected to take up a $1.50 smoking cessation fee on cigarettes and the state’s $6.8 billion general appropriations bill. Both are expected to be controversial.

Previous efforts to pass the $1.50 increase on cigarettes as a tax failed in the House. The chamber needs 76 votes to increase a tax but only 51 to implement a fee.

The cigarette measure and the budget bill have already cleared the Senate.

Most of the drama to be had Thursday involved a dispute between Gov. Mary Fallin and Rep. Scott Biggs, R-Chickasha, over several bills related to her criminal justice reform initiative.

Fallin chided Biggs during an early afternoon news conference for holding several bills in conference committee and called either for them to be reassigned or for him to allow votes on them.

“It’s pretty clear from the last year that the public gave its support ... to criminal justice reform in our state,” Fallin said at a 12:30 p.m. news conference.

“We’ve asked leadership to reassign bills to a different committee, just to let the members have a chance to debate the bills and vote on them,” Fallin said.

Biggs ultimately called a meeting Thursday evening of the House Criminal Justice Committee to hear the four bills he said the committee controls, but only so they could be signed out under “conferees could not agree.” That effectively kills the measures for this session but allows them to come back next year.

“What the governor is asking us to do took Texas six years to do, and we’re being asked to do it with zero funding,” Biggs said.

Rep. Cory Williams, D-Stillwater, twice tried to ask what the differences between the House and Senate conferees are but received no substantive answer.

“That’s right, kill criminal justice reform,” he said as Biggs gaveled the meeting to a close.

Earlier, during the afternoon session, the House passed Senate Bill 603, which instructs the Department of Corrections to carry out certain assessments during prisoner intake. The assessments are used for inmate case management and are expected to save money in the long run.

Biggs said he agreed with the idea but objected to implementing it now because the DOC said it will cost $80 million, including $10 million in the coming fiscal year.

Rep. Terry O’Donnell, R-Catoosa, who carried the bill, said he believe the estimate to be inaccurate.

The Legislature on Thursday passed House Bill 2360 to backfill $18 million in cuts made to common education in fiscal year 2017 due to a revenue failure.

Sen. Kim David, R-Porter, said passage of the measure kept a commitment to hold common education harmless from cuts.

Sen. Julie Daniels, R-Bartlesville, said the measure was insulting to other agencies that also took cuts due to the revenue failure.

Sen. Joseph Silk, R-Broken Bow, said he found it disrespectful to be asked to backfill cuts to common education when other agencies were not backfilled and still took cuts in the fiscal year 2018 budget.

The Senate also passed a measure to raise the gross production tax to 4 percent on wells currently paying 1 percent.

House Bill 2429 would increase the rate to 7 percent after June 30, 2019, said Sen. Roger Thompson, R-Okemah.

Thompson said 5,790 wells are currently paying 1 percent and would be affected. The measure would generate about $95 million a year in revenue, Thompson said.

The Senate also passed House Bill 1570 to correct an error in a bill that had already been signed. The signed version increased the age to 45 years from 20 years for child sex abuse victims to bring a civil suit.

An amendment added to the measure, House Bill 1470, made the loser in all civil suits pay the defendants’ legal fees. Currently, each party normally pays their own legal fees.

Critics said the amendment would have increased litigation and costs for job creators.