Legislature proposes budget - By State Rep. Randy Randleman
After months of work and lengthy conversations, legislative leaders announced a budget agreement for Fiscal Year 2022 on Thursday. We heard directly from constituents what they wanted to see in this new budget, and I believe our proposal delivers.
This budget serves the people of Oklahoma well by providing tax relief for individuals and businesses while also adding new investments into our key priorities like education, economic development, infrastructure and health care.
Core services that provide essential services for Oklahomans are maintained as well under this budget. The budget was built on the Board of Equalization’s certification of $9.6 billion in revenue available for appropriations that we received in February.
Of that figure, the proposed budget utilizes $8.3 billion. The rest is allocated to tax relief, replenishing savings reserves or replenishing off-the-top funding temporarily redirected during the pandemic last session.
I wanted to highlight a few areas I thought would be especially noteworthy to my constituents of House District 15:
* Increases common education funding by six percent to a record high of $3.2 billion, leading to reductions in class sizes in kindergarten and first grade which means teachers can spend more time one-on-one with students
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Expands broadband in rural areas of the state that are underserved or not served at all, thanks to a $42 million tax incentive for broadband providers
* Provides $35 million toward new economic development funding to aggressively recruit more jobs to Oklahoma and grow our economy
* Puts Oklahoma in the Top Ten nationwide for lowest tax rates by reducing personal income tax from five percent to four and three-fourths percent and corporate income tax from six percent to four percent
* Boosts reserves from less than $300 million today to more than $1 billion, nearly back to our amount prior to the pandemic
The majority of the state budget is filed as House Bill 2900, but portions of the budget are in other bills.
Those bills will now begin moving through the legislative process. After passing the Joint Appropriations and Budget Committee, which consists of members of both the House and Senate subcommittees, the bills will be eligible to be considered in the full House and Senate. Once they have passed both chambers, they move to the Governor’s desk for his consideration.
Providing a balanced budget is the only required duty for the Legislature that is actually outlined in the Oklahoma Constitution, which must be completed before our constitutional deadline for adjournment of the legislative session at 5 p.m. on Friday, May 28.
With the budget we have drafted, I am confident that the people of Oklahoma will be pleased and we will complete our legislative work without going past the deadline.
While the budget moves through the Legislature, we’ll also continue to hear amendments to legislation and work with the Senate to reach agreements on other bills.
As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns you may have. You can reach me at (405) 557-7375 or randy.randleman@okhouse.gov. Thank you for the honor of representing House District 15.
Rep. Randy Randleman represents District 15 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, which includes portions of Haskell, LeFlore, McIntosh, Muskogee, Pittsburg and Sequoyah counties.