Moving Ahead with Property Tax Reform

I am happy to report some fantastic news about one of the most needed reforms. Last week the window of time opened when Representatives can file new legislation to be heard during the upcoming session. Those who wish to make a point and provide their legislation with one of the initial House bill numbers are using this as an opportunity to make a strong statement by quickly placing their bills on file.

One of the first bills to be filed was House Joint Resolution 1001. HJR 1001 will be a proposal by Oklahoma City State Representative David Dank. Dank has been one of the leading proponents of one of the most important issues to my constituents. The issue is that of property tax reform. Each year I receive a number of constituent calls protesting the punitive and unfair nature of the ever-increasing property tax assessments that seem to always go up by about 5% with each new issuance.

In 2007, I had to report that while the property tax reform bill had passed the House, it had been killed in the Senate. In 2008, the property tax reform bill was approved in the Senate, but died in the House.

Now, Dank is upping the ante. The proposals of previous years purported to cut the ability of the county assessors to increase property taxes from 5% to 3%. This year, HJR 1001 will attempt to lower the assessment cap to 2%.

With new leadership in place in the State Senate and more reform-minded Representatives in the State House, I believe this is the year that Dank's proposal will be successful. Because the reform will require a change in the State Constitution, it will not be sent to the Governor but will instead require the approval of a vote of the people. Dank has indicated that he will contribute a significant amount to fund the campaign to make sure the word gets out to the people prior to the election.

I suspect the measure will have very little trouble passing a test at the polls. During the last legislative session, I included this issue on my constituent survey and the idea had the support of an overwhelming margin of voters.

This year, I will once again look for the opportunity to propose a plan requested by Logan County Commissioner Mark Sharpton. The proposal was approved by the House of Representatives as an amendment to SB 1956 during last year's session, but was later removed in the conference committee process. Had it been successful, it would have indexed each homeowner's homestead exemption to the rate of inflation. Inflation and the rate of property tax assessments have gone up for years, but the homestead exemption has stayed the same. Sharpton's plan would provide additional property tax relief because it would allow the exemption to grow as well.

As your Representative, I have heard your calls for immediate property tax reform. I take that desire very seriously and am happy to support these proposals.

Giving Special Interests The Power To Take Your Property

In the past, I have written about the possibility of the expansion of the Trans-Texas Corridor into Oklahoma and described why it is important that we not allow foreign-owned companies to control Oklahoma roads.

I have always felt that as the size of government gets bigger and more expansive, opportunities open up for those who have the ability to manipulate the government to use that power to empower their own special interest(s). Nowhere is this marriage of big business and big government more frightening than when a business is able to acquire power normally reserved to the government, such as the right of eminent domain. I believe an important part of our job as lawmakers is to prevent these types of abuses from occurring.

The example of the foreign-owned Texas toll road is one example of this type of abuse. However, this is not the only example of Texas allowing privately owned interests to operate much like the government in order to make a profit.

Over the past few years, a wealthy Texas businessman decided to incur the risk of investing in a product that he believes will be in great demand in the future. That product is water. The businessman formed a corporation known as Mesa Water and acquired water rights in a large aquifer in the Texas panhandle and tried to market this water to the nearby city of Amarillo.

However, Amarillo chose not to buy the water and Mesa apparently had a hard time finding a market for the water in the area close to where they owned the water rights. Not wanting to lose the investment, Mesa had to find a way to transport the millions of gallons of water from the Texas panhandle to the water-hungry Dallas metroplex. How would a privately-owned company acquire the power to deliver this much water over hundreds of miles?

Mesa hired one of Texas' most powerful lobbyists and went to work on Texas lawmakers. An amendment was sneaked through the Texas Legislature that allowed a water-supply district to transport water in a single corridor, or right-of-way. And then a second bill was passed which loosened the requirements for creating a water district, a governmental entity much like Oklahoma's rural water districts, with the power of eminent domain.

The bill loosened the requirements so much that it allowed just two people (both of whom were employees of the Texas businessman who started Mesa) to hold an election to form a new water district with governmental powers. With that two-person vote, Mesa was able to use the newly formed water district to afford them not just the ability to issue tax-free bonds for the construction of a massive pipeline, but the right and power of eminent domain to take control of the land along the 250 miles needed to build the pipeline.

This is one example of how a powerful special interest manipulated the legislative process to allow them to co-opt and use the power of the government to their advantage.

As your State Representative, I am dedicated to preventing similar abuses from occurring in Oklahoma.

Preparing For The Expansion Of Government

Last Friday, I attended a meeting of House Republicans in order to elect new officers for the next session of the legislature.

There were more representatives in the room than ever before as the people voted to elect sixty-one Republicans up from fifty-seven and chose not to remove a single GOP incumbent.

The group unanimously re-elected Tulsa Representative Chris Benge as speaker. I believe Benge had earned the confidence of the Representatives with his friendly down to earth demeanor that makes it easy for them to express their opinions and engage in honest dialog about the issues they feel strongly about.

I also believe that Benge and many in the legislature are committed to using the stronger than ever conservative leadership in Oklahoma's legislature to do what we can in order to keep the obvious upcoming expansion of the federal government in as much check as possible.

You are probably aware of the recent massive expansion of the federal government which will now be firmly in control of liberal politicians who will no doubt use that power to aggressively advance an agenda that is in direct opposition to the values of many Oklahomans.

It is important to note that in creating the Constitution our nation's founding fathers designed the federal government to be small and limited in comparison to state governments. They knew that the people have a much stronger voice at the local level whereas the ability of the people to affect change is greatly limited at the federal level of government.

However, over time under both Republican and Democrat administrations both parties have used the federal government as a tool to accomplish their various agendas.

As a result the federal government has become very powerful. Now, a group of aggressive liberals can use that power not only to move America to the left but to build upon itself and increase in size, making the federal government more expansive and powerful than ever before.

As a result a bigger federal government will likely be the most responsive to those only with enough money and influence to use that power to benefit themselves. This will leave the responsibility for paying for the big government to the average taxpayer who cannot afford to invest in the high-powered lobbyists' and politician's campaigns in order to manipulate the system for their benefit.

This means that in the upcoming years we can expect the federal government to reflect both the desires of the powerful special interests and the liberal politicians who seek to forever change our nation.

During the last session of the Oklahoma Legislature the House of Representatives voted to support House Joint Resolution 1089 by a 92-3 margin. HJR 1089 sought to reassert Oklahoma's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and, according to the resolution's language, is "serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates."

The Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

The author of the legislation stated, "The more we stand by and watch the federal government get involved in areas where it has no legal authority, we kill the Constitution a little at a time. The last few decades, the Constitution has been hanging by a thread."

While this resolution passed with the strong bi-partisan support of the Oklahoma House it appears to have failed to receive a hearing in the Oklahoma Senate. This year, with a new more conservative leadership in the Oklahoma Senate I am hopeful that legislation such as HJR 1089 will receive a fair hearing.

Allowing Our Public Safety Departments To Talk To Each Other

Attending a recent forum at the Woodcrest fire department reminded me that one of the experiences I have most enjoyed as State Representative during the past two years has been the role of Vice-Chairman and ranking Republican on the House of Representative’s Homeland Security Committee.

When designing the new house committee system, house leadership structured the system so that members of the committees could really focus on specialized areas of committee work. They did this by giving the committees both appropriation and policy oversight in their respective areas. It has been exciting to serve as Vice-Chairman of a committee where I could specialize in an area in which there is a core purpose for government involvement.

In this role, a little over a year ago I joined Oklahoma State Fire Marshal Robert Doke and a delegation of state government and firefighting officials in visiting the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). There we met with FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison. Administrator Paulson was complimentary of the manner in which Oklahoma officials have handled past emergencies and is supportive of the efforts made in developing additional emergency readiness.

One of the reasons for meeting with Paulison related to developing a truly interoperable statewide emergency communications system to allow officials in different agencies to communicate with one another. This issue has without doubt been the most comprehensive and the most controversial issue that our committee has considered in my term as Vice-Chair.

The development of this system took on added importance after the 2006 Oklahoma wildfires. During this emergency, responders had enormous difficulty communicating and organizing an effective response because there is no statewide system through which responders from one county or region can communicate with another. Law enforcement would also greatly benefit from a system that would allow the highway patrol to communicate with local officers when responding to incidents.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has provided nearly $30 million to Oklahoma in federal funds to set up the framework for a statewide 800mhz system along the Interstate 44 corridor which would cover the state’s most populous areas. However, the state would need $130 million more in order to cover the entire state. While millions have been spent on the current system, it appears as if the control of that system is limited to the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety. This risks the defeat the obvious purpose of a statewide system, which should be to allow all police and fire entities to talk to each other. It is difficult to justify why so many millions of dollars have been spent on a project that does not directly accomplish the main purpose for which it should be intended.

I believe that new options should be considered for a more cost-effective, internet-based communications system similar to OneNet, the system the State Regents for Higher Education use to provide high-speed communications to Oklahoma entities such as public schools, colleges, universities and local, tribal, state and federal governments. OneNet utilizes fiber optics and wireless technologies to transmit video, voice and data throughout Oklahoma.

This type of system would allow rural Logan County volunteer fire departments such as Woodcrest who can not afford the expensive 800mhz systems to communicate with each other and others with much less expensive off the shelf products thus saving local departments a lot of much needed funding.

I was pleased to co-sponsored a bill authored by Representative Charles Key that would have begun the process of developing this a more modern streamlined system that takes advantage of new technologies. While the Key bill is was unsuccessful, it is clear that more state officials are beginning to get on board with the plan to develop a less expensive, but truly interoperable system. This important reform can’t happen soon enough, as I believe millions of taxpayer dollars would be saved.

As your State Representative I remain committed to working for the enactment of these types of common sense reforms.