Budget standoff at Oklahoma Legislature drags on for second week

For a second straight week, a key Oklahoma Senate committee declined to hear any appropriations bills from the state House of Representatives on Wednesday as a budget standoff between the two chambers continued.

On the Senate floor on Wednesday morning, Sen. Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, the chair of that chamber’s Appropriations Committee, announced the cancellation of the committee’s weekly meeting. On the agenda for consideration were 42 House bills. The legislative deadline for House bills to be heard in Senate committees is Thursday.

“Members, we are still waiting for the official public numbers from the honorable House of Representatives dealing with our budget,” Thompson told fellow senators. “As we have previously announced, unless we had the public numbers, we would not be having appropriations today to move forward. We are not able to put a spreadsheet up on the board. So therefore, as of this time … appropriations committee for today has been cancelled.”

The Senate committee also didn’t hear any House bills last week, the result of a dispute between Senate and House leadership regarding budget processes. Senate leaders said April 2 they hadn’t received proposed state budget numbers from the House and that the Senate would not hear any House appropriations bills until the issue is resolved.

But after the House Appropriations Committee met late Wednesday afternoon, its chairman, Rep. Kevin Wallace, R-Wellston, said he'd given the Senate the House budget numbers on Tuesday, with the caveat House leaders still are working with their caucus to receive final approval for those numbers before they're made public.

"But the Senate does have them," Wallace told The Oklahoman. "I will just say this -- when someone doesn't want to hear another chamber's bills, any excuse or reason will do."

A spokesman for Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, said Wednesday night, "The Senate has seen preliminary budget numbers but the House would not give the Senate a copy of them because they had not been approved by the House GOP caucus."

During the House meeting, while asking a question about a Senate bill from Thompson being considered, House Majority Leader Jon Echols, R-Oklahoma City, made a comment about the Senate's decision to not hear House appropriations bills Wednesday. Echols asked the bill's House sponsor, Rep. Dick Lowe, R-Amber, "I saw the Senate author on this. Did he run any House bills in his committee today?" As a follow-up question to Lowe, Echols asked, "Would you believe I think good legislation deserves to see the light of day and I think political games are dumb?"

Echols ended up voting for the bill.

Meeting of legislative leaders fails to resolve impasse

Treat said earlier Wednesday he met with House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, earlier this week about the impasse.

“He told me that they just weren’t simply ready to share those numbers publicly yet,” Treat said. “They needed to work through their caucus process. I reiterated to him that I understood that and respected that he still needed to get caucus buy-in on his numbers, but we weren’t going to change our tune that we were absolutely committed to making sure this was done in a transparent manner, not just for the Senate process, but the entire way through.”

A spokesman for McCall, R-Atoka, said he had no immediate comment on the Senate committee not hearing House bills and that it’s “likely his comments from last week will stand.” Last Thursday, McCall said, "The House is going to continue to be the House. It's going to run its processes. We are going to respect the Senate and what they do internally … but the House will do its own processes."

McCall suggested that if Senate leaders “think there is a problem with negotiations, or communication, just reach out. Shoot me a text or a phone call. I'm always available.”

House and Senate deadlocked over different budget processes

The Senate passed its budget resolution on March 18, part of a new budget transparency initiative led by Treat. A key feature of the Senate budget process is the display of so-called "live" spreadsheets, which are updated as new spending bills are passed, Thompson said.

From the start of the process, Treat insisted the Senate budget be hammered out in open committee meetings. He promised that once the Senate received the House proposals and began discussing them, the Senate would also display the House budget numbers during open meetings. Treat said the Senate’s stance “shouldn’t be a surprise” to House leaders.

Wallace has said he has no issue with the House numbers being displayed, but before the House handed them over, its leaders wanted to resolve a leftover issue from the current fiscal year’s budget involving funding to the Oklahoma State Department of Education for teacher pay raises. Wallace and McCall both have said they want to deal with 2024 budget concerns before diving into work on the 2025 budget, while Treat has said there’s no reason both can’t be done simultaneously.

For the handful of school districts that don't receive funding for teacher pay from the state ― "off the formula," in Capitol parlance ― the Legislature planned to reimburse them, through the state agency, with funding for the mandate and instructed the agency to do so from the same pot of money used to pay on-the-formula schools.

Wallace and other House members have questioned the legality of that, saying a special provision is necessary -- likely a supplemental funding bill. Treat said the Senate sent over another bill to try and rectify the issue, but the House rejected that idea. Last Thursday, McCall said he suggested to Treat they work on a bill to be considered in a "JCAB," or joint committee on appropriations and budget, to rectify the situation. McCall said then he'd send Treat suggested language for the bill early this week.

Treat said he received three such possibilities late Tuesday and at first glance, the bills would not make the pay raise long-term, but would limit it to just the current fiscal year, which he termed as “unacceptable” to the Senate. Treat said the Senate believed that raise should be for more than just one year.

The House wants to provide $20 million in supplemental funding, but Treat said last week the state agency already has $15 million waiting to be directed toward the pay raises and that the actual amount needed to cover the remainder of the need is about $1.6 million.

Treat called the situation “an unnecessary delay. But we’re ready in the Senate to be here” until the end of the current legislative session “or beyond if we need to. We’re not in a hurry. We’re not going to get in a rush and abandon trying to make sure our budget is transparent and all Oklahomans, anyone with access to the Internet, can see what our position is.

“This is the state budget for Oklahoma. Oklahomans deserve to know what we’re talking about.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma Senate and House remain at impasse in how to deal with budget