OPEN DOOR POLICY MARCH 1 by Rep Joe Dorman

It has been a busy time around the Capitol with the legislative deadline passing to get bills out of committee. I received a favorable hearing on seven of the fifteen bills I had active in the House of Representatives. The bills are now considered property of the floor leader of the House in legislative terms. I am working with him to see if I can have all of these bills heard this week or next week before the final deadline to pass out of the house of origin to the other body.

These bills are:

HB 1658 – Exempt medical personnel under Good Samaritan Act to assist with secondary school functions;

HB 3123 – Restructure the volunteer firefighter tax credit to create two additional levels based upon training achievements;

HB 3126 – Adds a board member to the Oklahoma Partnership for School Readiness Board to qualify for federal matching dollars;

HB 3127 – Enhances reporting requirements for Tax Increment Financing Districts;

HB 3128 – Sets death benefits for state employees be paid directly to funeral homes for savings to the families;

HB 3224 – Requires assisted living facilities in Oklahoma to have a generator in case of power outages; and

HJR 1018 – Creates an income tax check-off for assisting the Office of Emergency Management in payment of phone lines and federal matching dollars in a disaster.

We have had several bills go through the legislative process at this point. There has not been much as far as controversial legislation to this point, but there have been a few which have had strong debate. One deals with a scope of practice on anesthesiologists versus nurse anesthetists. Another issue regulates accountability standards for certified public accountants versus public accountants. Each of these bills will likely be changed as they go through the process as these issues never seem to pass the final version with the language we first will see due to compromise by the authors and the industries involved. I have even seen this on some of my bills, such as the volunteer firefighter tax credit. The suggestions provided by the working group who assisted me, including Perry Brinegar, our Rural Fire Coordinator from ASCOG, provided valuable insight on how to make the bill much more effective.

We have had some great help at the Capitol to this point with the page program. This is high school program established to allow students to work with the legislators for a week and learn more about the process. When I was a staff member for the House, I helped create a mock legislature for the students so they could debate a mock bill and learn the process by going through it like a legislator.

I was pleased to have Emily Hines from Marlow serve as my first page for the session. She did a great job and was an excellent help to us. I have several other students set up to be pages and office aides this session and look forward to their visit. It was a busy time around the district this past week also. We saw six 4-H and FFA auctions to benefit the groups. I tried to make most of them, but was unable to make the ones in the middle of the week due to session. I have sent donations to each of the chapters to assist these programs. I did make the Cement auction on Friday and the Elgin auction on Saturday. Elgin had a great idea to dedicate the funds from one cake to create a scholarship for a graduating senior. I bought this one along with Mike Doyle, a local CPA in Elgin and my treasurer. I hope more of the chapters will do something like this to help students who are continuing their education after graduation. The cakes also went to good use as it was my assistant Pam’s birthday. The legislative assistants at the Capitol all enjoyed them very much as there was none left at the end of the day for me to take home.

It is an honor to represent your views at the State Capitol. If you wish to contact me and discuss one of these or another issue, I can be reached at my office in Oklahoma City toll-free at 1-800-522-8502, or directly at 1-405-557-7305. My e-mail address is joedorman@okhouse.gov at work. My mailing address is PO Box 559, Rush Springs, OK 73082 and my website is www.joedorman.com on the Internet. Thank you for taking time to read this column and I look forward to seeing you soon.