No shortage of ways to waste time at Legislature

SOME members of the Legislature apparently have too much time on their hands and thus figure, why not waste a little? This is what the House of Representatives did this week in entertaining a resolution brought by Rep. Chuck Strohm, R-Jenks, which in a nutshell urged the state to ignore U.S. Supreme Court rulings legalizing abortion.

Defense of the unborn is laudable, and is a cause we support. But the majority of these state-based efforts are so very tiresome. Over and over again, conservative lawmakers produce bills designed to limit access to abortion in Oklahoma. Sometimes these wind up being approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed into law, only to be flatly (and predictably) rejected by the courts.

Strohm’s resolution said that “every public official in Oklahoma … is directed to exercise their authority as appropriate in their respective jurisdictions to stop the murder of innocent unborn children by abortion.” It also directed state courts not to get in the way of the Legislature’s efforts to clarify criminal law pertaining to abortion.

The resolution approved Monday, after no debate or discussion, doesn’t carry the weight of law. Instead, it’s considered a statement of policy. Which doesn’t mitigate the fact that this was time poorly spent. As Democratic Rep. Jason Dunnington, D-Oklahoma City, noted ahead of the resolution’s consideration, the House plowed similar ground in February when it adopted a resolution against abortion. “We have already done this,” he said. “It is ludicrous.”

A similar description applies to a meeting held Monday by the House General Government Oversight and Accountability Committee, to hear Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony talk about a 28-year-old telephone rate case that was tainted by a bribed vote.

In September, the commission rightly voted 2-1 to reject a bid to reopen the case. Anthony cast the dissenting vote — no surprise, given that he helped federal investigators build their bribery case against a former commissioner and an attorney who worked for Southwestern Bell (now AT&T Oklahoma), and he has for years continued to beat the drum for the case to be reopened.

As an AT&T official noted, this case has been rejected at least six times in the past 25 years by the state Supreme Court or the Corporation Commission. But still it lingers — soon after the commission’s September vote, a group of former regulators and customers of Southwestern Bell appealed to the state’s high court.

Anthony told committee members that former Southwestern Bell customers stand to reap billions of dollars in refunds, much of that from compounded interest. He said proper adjudication could result in refunds of $200 million to $500 million for local, state and federal entities that were Southwestern Bell customers at the time — which would be helpful given the state’s budget challenges.

But those figures appear fanciful. The phone company has said many times that it long ago invested the excess revenue from the 1989 case.

In answer to a question, Anthony suggested lawmakers could potentially review the case as part of a legislative task force’s study of the Corporation Commission. Please, no. The hour misspent Monday on this long-settled issue was more than enough.