Murdock’s Minutes by Senator Casey Murdock

The 2021 legislative session is now underway. On Monday, we met in a joint session with the House to hear Governor Stitt’s annual State of the State Address, which gives him the opportunity to outline his budget and policy priorities for the session. By Tuesday, the focus in the Senate had shifted to committee work.

As I mentioned in my last article, many good pieces of legislation didn’t make it all the way through the process last year after the session was cut short due to COVID-19. Many of those bills have been refiled to be heard this session, along with hundreds of new pieces of legislation—a total of 1,035 bills just on the Senate side and more than two dozen joint resolutions.

This week, I wanted to tell you about a few more of the bills I filed for the 2021 session that I believe are of special interest to folks here in Senate District 27. Senate Bill 775 authorizes the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry to create a Livestock Offender Registry and to provide access to this registry to the public on the Department’s website. If someone has been convicted of stealing livestock, that’s important information for ranchers and farmers to know.

There are many positions throughout state government that are appointed by the governor, but those appointments must first be vetted and confirmed by the Senate before they can become official. Senate Bill 635 would require the appointment of the Secretary of the Commissioners of the Land Office to be subject to the advice and consent of the Senate as well.

Senate Bill 828 would remove a provision of law that prohibits a