Together Tuesday Update: Advocacy Alert for Con Con and Election Reform

By: Posted byKara Joy McKee Posted inInfo to Action/ Uncategorized

Dear friends,

Here is the easy part!  At the beginning of session there are fewer people you have to convince in order to make a difference, and there are far fewer voices clamoring for legislators’ attention.  Our best time all year to have a real impact is now!

Each Tuesday throughout the legislative session I’ll be sending updates to help you stay informed and effectively take action.  

In this Together Tuesday update I’ll very briefly cover these few important things:

  1. What happened in the last week?
  2. Advocacy Alert/ Call to ACTION on:
    • Con Con
    • and Election Reform
  3. Issue Spotlight: Our top SIX priorities
  4. How together we are making a difference

I hope you’ll read on, get inspired, and share this email with a friend!

What happened in the last week:

The OK Policy team was at the capitol for the State of the State address last Monday.  You can view our four takaways from the governor’s budget here.  Learn even more about the budget hole, the structural deficit and what you can do about it on our OK PolicyCast interview with David Blatt here.   After the State of the State speech our team had some very good conversations with legislators and other advocates for some important bi-partisan policy action.  

We’re excited! This session we are going to have some win wins. Go team Oklahoma!

Advocacy Alert:

This is a call to ACTION on Con Con and Election Reform!

We’re calling you all to action against the Constitutional Convention (Con Con) and in favor of Boosting Election Reform bills that have been sent to the Rules Committee this week.  

Senator Ron Justice is the chair of the Rules Committee and it would do our coalition a whole lot of good if he would:

“Refuse to hear any bills that call for a Constitutional Convention or a Balance Budget Amendment.”

AND

“Please hear the bills proposing Election Reform.”

Stopping the Con Con in its tracks before it can even leave committee would do a lot to protect our state from opening that particular Pandora’s Box.  It would also free up our advocacy time to focus on our five other priorities (2-sheet summary here) and all the rest of the good policy decisions we can make this session.  

The Election Reform bills (found here) have the potential to vastly improve the state of democracy in Oklahoma.  At the very least our legislators should be taking a look at and debate these bills this session.

Please contact Senator Justice today and ask your networks to contact him, as well ( contact info here).

Senator Ron Justice
2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., RM. 526
Oklahoma City, OK 73105
(405) 521-5537
justice@oksenate.com
Executive Assistant: Linda Terrill

Issue Spotlight

You could get caught up in all sorts of fruitless arguments this spring OR you could spend that energy on these six priorities that are just the right combination of urgent, important, and achievable.

You can follow the links below for our first fact sheet on each priority and click here for our 2-page fact sheet summarizing the six issues.  

Ask me questions and give us feedback about these at info@togetherok.org.

How we moving toward a better Oklahoma TOGETHER! 

We are creatively finding ways that this group can be of benefit ALL Oklahomans.

Together we are stronger when you:

  • realize that most Oklahomans are discouraged about our broken democracy and they need encoragement from each of you!
  • connect the dots between unnecessary tax breaks and tax cuts and lack of funding for services like education.
  • boost our shared priorities by sending these factsheets to your network and both sharing from and linking to our posts on social media.
  • If you still have questions about who we are or how you fit in please contact me directly at info@togetherok.org. 

Any more ideas on how we can do this better?  How can we make this coalition a useful resource?  Let me know!

Thank you all for taking your time to work with us.  We are in this together and together we are on our way to making Oklahoma a great state! 

Sincerely,

Kara-Joy McKee
Outreach Specialist
Oklahoma Policy Institute
info@togetherok.org