Midwest City’s State Rep. Gary Banz doesn’t know what’s exactly in store for the upcoming legislative session but he is sure another tough round of budget cuts is in the state’s future again this year.
As the filing deadline was the week of Jan. 13, Banz said no one can predict what bills will be voted on or what will surface as the most controversial bills until session has begun.
Rep. Banz of District 101, though, talks about the things he’s been hearing so far this year.
"The tax issue that was tossed out by the Supreme Court as a violation of the single-subject rule, will probably be a topic of conversation. The Speaker is pretty much on record as favoring it and the Governor has backed off of it," Banz said.
He is referring here to a law cutting the state income tax rate from 5.25 percent to 5 percent starting in 2015. However the bill also contains lines dedicated to creating a fund to provide repairs to the State Capitol. This violates the state constitution’s single-subject rule, Banz said, which keeps secondary measures out of laws so that legislators and voters know specifically what they are voting on.
Budget is of course always a big issue and is especially important this year because of both it being an election year and a substantial deficit compared to last year.
"The December numbers indicate that we have about $170 million less to appropriate from a year ago," Banz said. "When all state agencies combined are asking for $1.5 billion in increased revenue, and were in the hole, you can get the picture."
Personally, Rep. Banz has written a few bills that are set to be filled and voted on this session. The first is an extension of a tax break bill for enlisted military that passed several years ago.
"I was the House author on a bill that exempts certain military salaries from state taxation. It had a sunset provision in it for 2015, so we will be running a bill this year to eliminate that sunset and make it permanent, which would give some stability to our military and our community," Banz said.
This bill’s intent was to maintain the state’s numbers by providing comparable tax benefits to other state’s military service members.
"We did this to encourage all the folks who are recruited out of Oklahoma to maintain their home of record here," Banz said. "By doing that there are obvious immediate advantages. It helps when it comes time to count people for US Census. We won’t have 50 to 60,000 people living here whose home of record is somewhere else. And it has the potential to attract people to change their home of record to Oklahoma."
He co-authored this bill with Sen. Steve Russell. He also worked on a few constituent request bills for volunteer firefighters and volunteer law-enforcement.
Finally, Banz said he vows to make another attempt to adhere to the Oklahoma constitutional provision allowing for a constitutional convention every 20 years.
"The question before the legislature is not do we have a constitutional convention or not are we going to live up to the constitution and send that vote to the people. We don’t make the decision whether or not to have the convention," Banz said. "This will be the third attempt I have made to try to get this question out there for the people of Oklahoma. The last couple of attempts to get this have been blocked by Senate Leadership."
No matter how these and all other votes end up, EastWord News will keep readers informed on major state government decisions throughout the 2014 session.
