Disappointing games played at the Legislature

WHY do Oklahoma voters hold the Legislature in low esteem?

One explanation is provided by the continued name-calling and back-and-forth and gamesmanship stemming from negotiations on how to fill an $878 million budget hole. But there are certainly others. Recall that early in this session, barely two months after voters had given strong approval to two state questions dealing with criminal justice reform, members filed seven bills to significantly change the language adopted by voters. Why? Because, one Republican senator said, voters didn’t understand what they were voting for when they approved State Questions 780 and 781.

SQ 780 reclassified simple drug possession and property crimes of under $1,000 as misdemeanors instead of felonies.

Under SQ 781, savings generated from having fewer people in prison would be used to fund diversion programs in the counties.

Voters knew exactly what they were doing when they approved these questions, and let lawmakers know it. Thankfully, efforts to essentially gut the two state questions went by the wayside.

Yet other Republicans oppose the idea of significantly changing how crime and punishment are handled in Oklahoma, and have done what they can to sideline others’ efforts.

Sen. Anthony Sykes, R-Moore, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, spiked a bill this year that would have given law officers discretion on whether to arrest someone after responding to an emergency call where someone is overdosing.

Thirty-seven other states have such “Good Samaritan” laws, and Oklahoma needs one, too, given the state’s struggles with prescription drug overdoses. But Sykes killed the bill without explanation, to the bill’s author or to reporters – and, by extension, to the public.

The chairman of the judiciary committee in the House, Rep. Scott Biggs, R-Chickasha, has burnished his tough-on-crime reputation by working to weaken bills produced by a governor’s task force on criminal justice reform. A number of bills approved in the Senate were watered down in Biggs’ House committee and then sent on to a conference committee.

They were expected to be heard in that committee on Friday, but Biggs suspended the meeting after the House went into session. He noted that House rules prohibited the committee from continuing to meet while the full House was convened.

Before that move was made, however, the time and location of the conference committee meeting was changed three times. And when the panel finally met, Biggs spent enough time dealing with another item that the corrections reform bills got squeezed out — what a coincidence.

Such maneuvers aren’t new. Those being used by Republicans today were employed by Democrats when their party controlled the Legislature.

The shame is that when voters moved Republicans into control, first in the House in 2004 and later in the Senate, they expected a different — a better — approach to governing. What they seem to have gotten instead, particularly as the Republican majority has grown, is simply a variation on a theme, where voter wishes take a back seat to politics and where statesmen are few and far between.

It’s as tiresome and disappointing as ever.