Lawmakers mull effort to reduce supermajority threshold for tax hikes

Tulsa World barbara.hoberock@ tulsaworld.com

Oklahoma voters may be asked to revisit a state constitutional requirement that tax increases receive three-fourths support in both chambers of the Legislature or go to a vote of the people.

“I have heard of multiple people that plan to put forth some kind of measure,” said Sen. Jason Smalley, R-Stroud. The plan is to put it on the ballot next November, he said.

More than 25 years after its passage, State Question 640 has again become a focal point. Lawmakers recently concluded a special session that saw them fail to reach the measure's requirement of a supermajority of votes in both chambers to raise revenue or increase taxes.

Gov. Mary Fallin is expected to call a second special session to continue efforts to repair the budget and fund core services.

David Blatt, Oklahoma Policy Institute executive director, agreed that some lawmakers have a “strong interest” in revising State Question 640.

Smalley said he didn’t think SQ640 needed to be completely repealed, but the threshold needed for tax hikes needs to be lowered. He said he doubts the 75 percent threshold can ever be reached.

With a sizable faction of House Republicans opposed to just about any tax increase at all, the three-quarters bar has remained out of reach.

SQ640 passed during a March 10, 1992, special election with 56 percent of the vote after residents successfully gathered enough signatures to get it on the ballot. Under the measure, a revenue bill can become law only if it is approved by a three-quarters vote of both legislative chambers and is signed by the governor, or it is referred by the Legislature to a vote of the people at the next general election and receives a majority of votes.

SQ640 came after lawmakers in 1990 passed House Bill 1017, an education reform and tax hike package.

Bob Cullison, a former leader of the Oklahoma State Senate, said SQ640 “was kind of payback for passing House Bill 1017.”

Since its passage in 1992, voters have approved a tax hike on cigarettes in 2004 but voted down an increase in fuel taxes in 2005.

Norman attorney Stan Ward, who worked to secure passage of SQ640, said he doesn't think any changes should be made to the measure.

His group, STOP New Taxes, went through three legal challenges to get the question on the ballot, he said.

SQ640 puts reasonable curbs on the Legislature's ability to raise taxes, he said, adding that Oklahomans should have a say in when and how their taxes are raised.

He pointed to the defeat last fall of State Question 779, which would have raised the sales tax by 1 percentage point to fund education, as an example of voters voicing their wishes.

Sen. Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, said the threshold needs to be lowered to 60 percent for increasing or decreasing taxes.

“Tax reform is going to be essential in the future for us to continue to survive, and as long as we are at the 75 percent requirement we will never do tax reform in the state of Oklahoma,” he said.

Rodger Randle, former Tulsa mayor and past leader of the state Senate, said SQ640 "was a way of saying we don’t trust our elected representatives to wisely act on our behalf."

“Instead of letting the folks we elected make the decision that they believe best for the state, we are going to wire the system to limit their ability to govern,” said Randle, who now teaches in the graduate program at the University of Oklahoma. “And that is what we have done by requiring these supermajorities for tax increases. We have created a system of government by the minority.”

Another former Senate president pro tem, Cal Hobson, said that to create even a remotely fair fight to alter or repeal SQ640, education, health care and other entities would have to raise millions of dollars to combat opponents, who he characterized as a handful of wealthy oilmen.

“It is a handy excuse for weak-kneed lawmakers to not try to do anything,” Hobson said. “It is a near impossible threshold.”