Legislature passes budget bills, calls special session

Things were extremely busy in the House last week as we began hearing and passing the annual budget bills. The procedure alone is somewhat cumbersome. By law, we must pass a balanced budget every year and we cannot spend more money than we have.

Many of the budget bills first have to go through the General Conference Committee on Appropriations then through the Joint Committee on Appropriations & Budget. Then they are heard in both legislative chambers.

We pass one main general appropriations bill and then a number of other bills that set limits for the agencies to follow spending for core service areas.

The general appropriations bill this year is Senate Bill 1040. It passed both the Senate and the House and now awaits the governor’s signature or veto. As with any bill of this magnitude, the governor can exercise his power to veto the entire bill or parts of it. I am betting he vetoes part of it.

We had authority to appropriate $10.4 billion this year, but $1.3 billion of that is non-recurring, one-time cash reserves. So, we’re appropriating $9.84 billion, saving some for the eventual rainy day and spending some on one-time projects. Of the money we’re dedicating to core state services, 44%, or $4.2 billion, will go to education. We’re keeping K-12 at the record high of $3.2 billion, and we’ve increased funding to higher education by 7% to reach a total of $873 million.

Health and human services is the second largest area of investment, at $2.8 billion, or 29%, of the appropriated budget, followed by transportation at 8% and public safety at 7%.

One important highlight this year is we’ve dedicated an additional $32.5 million to the Department of Human Services to completely eliminate the developmentally disabled waiting list. This has been years in the making, but with this funding, we will be able to provide critical services to more than 5,000 developmentally disabled Oklahomans who have requested but are not yet receiving state services.

It’s important to remember, the legislatively appropriated budget represents only about a third of the total state operating budget, which also includes off-the-top tax apportionments to specific purposes, federal funding and more. Schools, for instance, have received record amounts of pandemic relief funding, and they receive federal funds, local ad valorem taxes, proceeds from the state lottery, Indian gaming, locally passed bonds and more.

As if passing the budget were not a big enough challenge, the Legislature also this week decided to call a special session to run legislation that will give some legislative control over how the state’s $1.8 billion portion of federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds are spent. 

The last time the Legislature called itself into special session was 1994, so this is a rare situation.

This will allow the Legislature to enact an ARPA spending plan as agreed to by the Joint Committee on Pandemic Relief Funding. We also will be able to consider appropriations for large economic development projects in the state.

Please feel free to contact me at marcus.mcentire@okhouse.gov or (405) 557-7327.