Budget picture looking bright

Besides working on legislation, the Appropriations Committee, along with the chairs and vice chairs of the appropriations subcommittees, have been meeting regularly about the budget. Our budgetary picture this year is bright as we’ll have nearly $10.5 billion to appropriate for the upcoming fiscal year that begins on July 1.

Around $1.3 billion of this is from carryover funds and special cash from previous sessions, so we’re trying to decide how best to utilize these one-time funds. We weren’t sure how the ongoing pandemic was going to affect the state’s economy, so we’ve been extremely careful with spending the last two years, and hopefully will continue to this session as well. We won’t have these funds next year since they aren’t from recurring revenue, so it’s imperative that we either save this money or spend it on one-time projects to address critical needs in our state government. 

This is the final week for committee work on bills from the opposite chamber. My Senate bills are moving forward, and I’m happy to say that SB 1667 has made it to the House floor. This is the bill that will allow county assessors to stop sending disabled veterans notification of property valuation increases since they are exempt from ad valorem taxes.

Back on our side of the rotunda, two of the House bills I’m carrying, HB 3344 and HB 3729, are awaiting consideration by the full Senate. The first modifies the procedure for requisition and inventory tracking of county equipment as well as bid solicitations. I’ll discuss this legislation in more detail later. 

The other measure will remove the $3,000 cap on wages payable to a deceased employee’s beneficiary and allows any wages owed to be paid via direct deposit. Should these two House bills be approved by the full Senate, they’ll then move on to Governor Stitt for his final consideration. 

Another bill that will be extremely beneficial for the state is HB 4354, which passed its first Senate committee and will go before the full Appropriations Committee this week. This will create the Oklahoma Research and Development Attraction Act, directing the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) to create a Research and Development Attraction Grants Program to foster research and development in key industry clusters. It will allow OCAST to award matching funds to eligible businesses to offset a portion of expenses incurred through project engagement with an Oklahoma institution of higher education or nonprofit research institution. The measure also allows OCAST to award matching funds of up to 50% of the cost of the project, not to exceed $100,000, to eligible businesses. This will help recruit more new businesses to Oklahoma who are involved with research and development in aerospace and energy diversification.

To be eligible, a business must:

n Be an Oklahoma-based small business;

n Operate in aerospace and autonomous systems, life sciences, or energy diversification;

n Partner with an Oklahoma-based research entity; 

n Conduct its research and development project within Oklahoma; and

n File an application with OCAST showing the total cost of the project and demonstrating private capital to fund at least 50 percent of the project.

We’re getting into the exciting part of session where a large number of bills will be sent to the governor’s desk on a daily basis, so we’ll also start seeing more bills signed into law. This, along with getting a final budget agreement, is what we look forward to – seeing all of our hard work over the past year coming to fruition. I’ll keep you posted as things move forward.

Thank you again for the privilege of serving our district and the State of Oklahoma in the Senate. If I can be of any assistance, you can reach me at (405) 521-5563 or Chris.Kidd@oksenate.gov.