By State Rep. Gus Blackwell
Last week a person stopped me at a local store in Guymon to discuss an idea for a bill, which they wanted me to file. He asked when Session started again. He did so in order to remind me about his idea in February for the new Session. However, I told him it would be too late then. The perfect time to contact me about new ideas for new laws is now.
This is one reason I try to contact people during the Summer and Fall months. Most of my ideas for bills come from constituents. The fact is…the timeline for filing bills is just around the corner.
The deadlines for next session were just published and are coming up quickly. The first deadline is on December 10th. This is the last day to request a bill in a specific title of law. This request does not necessitate any bill language, just the subject matter of the bill. At this point, in the process I can request up to 20 bills to be reserved.
The next deadline is for submitting language for the requested bills. This deadline has not been finalized, but is usually in the last week of December. At this time, all language for the bill must be inserted and finalized. The language may be changed in committee process, but the intended initial language must be in place buy the end of December deadline.
If no language is submitted, the legal staff will simply put a paragraph from existing law into a bill, changing only one or two words. They may change the word “a” to the word “the”. This is where the term Shell Bill comes from. The bill is just a shell with no real content, at that point.
The final deadline for bills is on January 20th. This is when the final maximum of eight bills I can submit must be filed. In the past, this has been a very tedious and expensive process, with 17 copies of each bill printed and turned into the House Bill Processing Department. With the House’s move to computers and a paperless process, this event is now very easy and economical.
Besides working on the bill process, the Interim Study phase is also beginning. They will be conducted on Tuesdays or Thursdays in August-November. They must be concluded by November 15th, when the current Session is officially over. I have been approved for four different Interim Studies. I will also be holding a day to hear Interim Studies in the Rules Committee, for which I am the Chairman. These studies are a chance to have an in-depth investigation into a topic before it is considered during Session.
This is when the legislators can spend time doing their “homework” on a specific issue. It is presented in the committee in which it will be heard during Session. That way other legislators can also be informed about the subject. This greatly accelerates the bill process during regular Session.
The most important interim study I will be having deals with agriculture and trucking. I will be looking at ways to ease the burden on farm trucks and their compliance with US Department of Transportation regulations.
I will also be doing two interim studies looking at the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. One study will look at the foster care system and how it can be optimized. The other will be looking at streamlining the administrative process in ODHS.
The final study will be in the Wildlife Committee. We will be looking at ways to mitigate the problem of the Lesser Prairie Chicken and wind farms. It is essential this issue does not slow down wind farm development in the panhandle.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please contact me at home in Goodwell, 580-349-2263, or at my office in OKC at 405-557-7384. You can also e-mail me at gusblackwell@okhouse.gov or just chat with me when you see me at area events.
