Together Tuesdays Update: Stop con con in committee and the how of the budget hole

By: Posted byKara Joy McKee Posted inInfo to Action/ Together Tuesday Updates

In this Together Tuesdays Update I’ll very briefly cover these few important things:

  1. What happened in the last week?
  2. Advocacy Alert: Con Con bills in committee
  3. Issue Spotlight: Explaining the budget hole
  4. How together we are making a difference

What happened in the past week?

Right now bills are passing in committee and moving to the House and Senate floor.  This graphic shows the process well.  Hopefully legislators are hearing from you both when they get it right and when you disagree with their votes.  

by Kim Davies
by Kim Davies

If you would like to see all the bills the Together Oklahoma team is following gathered in one place check HERE.  

Advocacy Alert!

The risks posed by a constitutional convention are too dangerous to ignore!

Please activate your networks AND all the folks who stand to be hurt by this lose-lose proposal to call the members of the Rules Committees in both the House and the Senate today.

We know that the House versions of the Con Con bill HJR 1018 and HB1804 by Banz are on the agenda for the House Rules committee Wednesday Morning at 10:30.  The Senate Rules committee could still take up the four con con proposals: SB 191 and SJR 8 by Senator Brecheen,and SJR 4 and SB 53 by Standridge.

In the House Rules Committee (found HERE)

Ask them to Vote NAY on HJR1018 and Vote NAY on HB1804, both by Banz

House Rules Committee Members

In the Senate Rules Committee (found HERE)

Ask them to Vote NAY on SJR 191 by Brecheen, NAY on SJR 8 by Brecheen, NAY on SB 53 by Standridge, and NAY on SJR 4 by Standridge, if Senator Justice decides to hear any of these the bills.

Senate Rules Committee Members

You can download the Con Con factsheet HERE.

Once on the floor these bills can become much more difficult to defeat.  Now is the time to save us all some work in the coming weeks!

It might be tempting to think that states could control a Con Con but we know that isn’t true. Many prominent constitutional scholars from across the ideological spectrum agree that once a convention is called, neither the states nor Congress have the power to limit its actions, creating the risk of destabilizing the nation’s entire constitutional framework. (more about that HERE)

Issue Spotlight

When folks are explaining our more that $600 million budget hole AND our inability to adequately fund education and other critical services, the drop in oil prices is getting a lot of attention.  The truth is that we knew we’d have at least a $300 million budget hole before the new year. Last yearlawmakers were warned about scheduling tax cuts that would add to the budget hole, but they did it anyway.

When you call your legislators to ask them to increase teacher salaries and restore education funding to pre-recession levels, please remind them that they helped create the problem and they have options like THESE to fix it.  They need to hear personal stories from you about why continuing to cut our revenues isn’t going to help us fund services.

How together we are making a difference

What if a whole bunch of us decided to step outside the party politics paradigm to look at public policy guided by good research and care for all Oklahomans. What would that look like? That is the goal of Together Tuesdays. Today, on the day of the week when elections are typically held, we can turn our eyes and ears to public policy and commit to having a conversation or two about how we DO we the people.

We send you this update each week and as you post about it on Facebook and Twitter you can use the hashtag #TogetherTuesdays to let people know we are in this together and to find other like minded folks in your area.

We are building volunteer teams all over the state. If you want to join us sign up HERE.

Thanks for all you do to put Oklahoma on the right track!

Kara-Joy McKee
info@togetherok.org