Legislative leaders: Economy, immigration and education among priorities
By M. Scott Carter
The Journal Record
Posted: 09:31 PM Wednesday, January 26, 2011
OKLAHOMA CITY – With a little more than a week to go before the opening day of the legislative session, House and Senate Republican leaders said they would focus on funding Oklahoma’s core services, creating new jobs and fixing a $600 million budget hole.
Legislative leaders – along with Gov. Mary Fallin – spoke at a forum Wednesday sponsored by the Associated Press.
And while the Legislature’s GOP leaders offered few specifics on how they planned to address a second budget hole, both Republican and Democratic leaders said public safety, corrections and education were priorities for their caucuses.
House Democratic leader Scott Inman, D-Del City, urged lawmakers to look cautiously at school reform.
“We’ve got a lot of school districts,” Inman said. “And we do need to look at school reform in that sense to see what cost savings could be had. But we cannot balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable.”
Inman said few people were more vulnerable than the elementary students served by our state schools.
The House Democrat also urged his fellow lawmakers to stop passing unconstitutional legislation and to stop pandering and demagoguing to special-interest groups, noting that 43 pieces of legislation had been challenged in court... FULL ARTICLE
Posted on
Wed, January 26, 2011
by John Cox