Over the years I have greatly enjoyed the opportunity to work with the Senators whose Senate districts overlap with House District 31. I have found that these Senators often share the common value of smaller and more fiscally responsible government, and I have always been happy to work with them to accomplish the goal of applying conservative economic principles to state government.
In 2008, one of these Senators, Senator Patrick Anderson asked me to serve as the House sponsor for his Senate Bill 1398. Anderson has always maintained that state government should avoid unnecessary debt and was concerned because the Oklahoma Regents for Higher Education were issuing millions of dollars of debt without legislative approval or approval from the voters of Oklahoma.
The regents have been issuing this debt as part of what is known as the real property master lease program. In past, apparently the Legislature allowed higher ed to start this program so that the regents could fix items such as roofs on buildings or replace air conditioning systems.
In 2008, however, we learned that the program was being used for superfluous items such as a very expensive scoreboard at the University of Oklahoma’s football stadium. This fiscal policy seemed very irresponsible and Anderson proposed that we pass a bill to give the Legislature the ability to stop the regents if their efforts to issue debt grew out of control. This is what Senate Bill 1398 proposed to do.
Senate Bill 1398 was approved by the Legislature and signed by Governor Henry. It stated that any attempt by the regents to expend the higher ed master lease schedule could be rejected by the Legislature, provided we took action within the first 45 days of session.
This year, the regents again went too far in my view. Instead of just using the lease program to issue debt for maintenance items, the regents proposed incurring 40 million dollars of debt to build the new 45,000 square foot building on the UCO campus as the new office for the state medical examiner.
In recent years, the Legislature has considered taking up the issue of issuing bonds for the medical examiner project, but as the economic downturn occurred and with the dramatic swing in the Legislature to the fiscal conservative point of view, these types of bond issuances have become unpopular. It is clear the Legislature will not approve the bond issuance if asked to vote on it. If the Legislature is going to approve the construction of this new building, it should be with future surpluses that would allow the state to avoid issuing new debt or by dedicating a revenue source for the project. The state’s debt now stands at about 2 billion dollars, the payments on the debt seem to grow every year, and multiple legislators are becoming concerned that we have too much debt on the books.
The regents’ action of placing this project on their real property master lease program circumvents the legislative process and would issue the debt without a vote by the legislators. I don’t believe this was the intent of the master lease program.
While the legislature doesn’t get to vote to approve the expenditures on the master lease program, because of the passage of Senate Bill 1398 in 2008, we do have the ability with a majority vote of both the House and Senate to stop this proposed expenditure.
To that end, Senator Anderson sponsored Senate Concurrent Resolution 30 and on Friday I filed House Concurrent Resolution 1033. These mirror resolutions if approved would disapprove of this attempted debt issuance.
In fact, the whole lease program probably needs to be shut down. Higher education officials should budget for operational needs without issuing debt. It is now clear that the program will always be susceptible to bad decision making that will continue to tag Oklahoma taxpayers with millions of dollars of unnecessary debt for many years into the future.
It upcoming years, it will be important for those of us who are fiscally conservative legislators to continue working to instill a pay-as-you-go mindset in state government. Expenditures such as the new ME office should be paid for without incurring the unnecessary millions of dollars of fees and interest that accompany the issuance of debt.
It will be important for us to offer positive solutions to the valid needs of state government without forcing the taxpayer to incur more debt. One of those solutions will be the content of a future article.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Exposing Lobbyist Influence
Oklahoma labor Commission Mark Costello recently provided Oklahomans with a service by exposing lobbyist influence.
You may be aware that Costello campaigned for office and won election on a platform of not accepting political contributions from lobbyists. This means that as a statewide elected official Costello is turning down thousands of lobbyist-directed dollars that would no-doubt be flowing into his re-election account had he not taken this pledge.
Costello has now started to expose and champion the case for why politicians should reject this funding.
To make his case he has pointed to a group that has historically contributed heavily to Democrats but has subsequently shifted gears and now contributes predomintly to Republicans. Why the change? With every statewide elected position and the Legislature in Republican hands those who are seeking influence now appear to be buying that influence from Republicans.
Here is what Costello said in an email to Republican party officials.
“In 2010, when Republicans held a majority in both chambers, the public employees’ PAC contributed $102,750 to Republican candidates. This compares to only $57,750 donated to Democrat candidates in the same year.
Until we became a majority in the legislature, the public employees’ PAC was a long-time political enemy of Republicans; in 2004 the OPEA contributed $86,143 to Democrats in an effort to prevent Republicans from gaining a majority of House seats while contributing $2,500 to a handful of Republicans – a 34 to 1 ratio for Democrats. We won – they lost.”
I find it remarkable when politicians attempt to assert that lobbyist contributions do not matter. Whenever a politician makes this point, in my view, he is either extremely naive or very dishonest. Costello has provided a service to the people of Oklahoma in that he has quantified this influence by documenting the shift in contributions from Democrats to Republicans. This is an obvious effort to buy influence with Republicans because of the change in power.
Working inside of the legislative environment for the past five years has allowed me to see this influence first hand. We know that we have to factor in for lobbyist opposition whenever we try to downsize the size of government. Even the most basic and important of modernization reforms will come under fire from those lobbyists who are attempting to preserve the status-quo and the benefits that their employer receives from inefficient, big-spending state government.
Since this last legislative week was the first week of the legislative session much of the work was in committees. Lobbyists aggressively work to influence the bills in the committee process because this is the vital first step to passing or defeating a bill. These lobbyists will fill committee meetings, feed questions to the members of the committee who are carrying water for them and will put great pressure on the other members to vote their way. They are professional relationship manipulation experts, and expert strategists and they know the pressure points to push to get a key lawmaker’s vote. Their attempts to kill a good bill appear to be rather like a game to them. A team of lobbyist can point to a dead bill much like a trophy and use it as a warning to other legislators who might try to upset their deal. Anyone who believes those big campaign contributions don’t factor into the voting consideration of some of the legislators is very much out of touch.
Costello is right to call on lawmakers to refuse these lobbyist-direct political contributions. Lawmakers who do not have to worry about these campaign contributions are freed up to vote on bills on the merits without undue special interests influence. I can personally testify that not taking gifts or contributions from lobbyists was one of the best decisions I could have made because it has absolutely liberated me from having to take the lobbyists influence into account when casting my vote.
You may be aware that Costello campaigned for office and won election on a platform of not accepting political contributions from lobbyists. This means that as a statewide elected official Costello is turning down thousands of lobbyist-directed dollars that would no-doubt be flowing into his re-election account had he not taken this pledge.
Costello has now started to expose and champion the case for why politicians should reject this funding.
To make his case he has pointed to a group that has historically contributed heavily to Democrats but has subsequently shifted gears and now contributes predomintly to Republicans. Why the change? With every statewide elected position and the Legislature in Republican hands those who are seeking influence now appear to be buying that influence from Republicans.
Here is what Costello said in an email to Republican party officials.
“In 2010, when Republicans held a majority in both chambers, the public employees’ PAC contributed $102,750 to Republican candidates. This compares to only $57,750 donated to Democrat candidates in the same year.
Until we became a majority in the legislature, the public employees’ PAC was a long-time political enemy of Republicans; in 2004 the OPEA contributed $86,143 to Democrats in an effort to prevent Republicans from gaining a majority of House seats while contributing $2,500 to a handful of Republicans – a 34 to 1 ratio for Democrats. We won – they lost.”
I find it remarkable when politicians attempt to assert that lobbyist contributions do not matter. Whenever a politician makes this point, in my view, he is either extremely naive or very dishonest. Costello has provided a service to the people of Oklahoma in that he has quantified this influence by documenting the shift in contributions from Democrats to Republicans. This is an obvious effort to buy influence with Republicans because of the change in power.
Working inside of the legislative environment for the past five years has allowed me to see this influence first hand. We know that we have to factor in for lobbyist opposition whenever we try to downsize the size of government. Even the most basic and important of modernization reforms will come under fire from those lobbyists who are attempting to preserve the status-quo and the benefits that their employer receives from inefficient, big-spending state government.
Since this last legislative week was the first week of the legislative session much of the work was in committees. Lobbyists aggressively work to influence the bills in the committee process because this is the vital first step to passing or defeating a bill. These lobbyists will fill committee meetings, feed questions to the members of the committee who are carrying water for them and will put great pressure on the other members to vote their way. They are professional relationship manipulation experts, and expert strategists and they know the pressure points to push to get a key lawmaker’s vote. Their attempts to kill a good bill appear to be rather like a game to them. A team of lobbyist can point to a dead bill much like a trophy and use it as a warning to other legislators who might try to upset their deal. Anyone who believes those big campaign contributions don’t factor into the voting consideration of some of the legislators is very much out of touch.
Costello is right to call on lawmakers to refuse these lobbyist-direct political contributions. Lawmakers who do not have to worry about these campaign contributions are freed up to vote on bills on the merits without undue special interests influence. I can personally testify that not taking gifts or contributions from lobbyists was one of the best decisions I could have made because it has absolutely liberated me from having to take the lobbyists influence into account when casting my vote.
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