This past week, I won final Senate passage for SB 131, dealing with Oklahoma’s Medicaid expansion, which was approved by voters nearly one year ago and goes into effect July 1. Many of the details of the implementation of this expansion are going to be addressed through executive action and now through this additional legislation.

SB 131 allows the governor’s plan for how we’re going to take care of the Medicaid expansion population to move forward, but at the same time, it adds significant guardrails to make sure doctors and hospitals in rural Oklahoma are protected from abusive practices of large insurance companies. This bill ensures legislative oversight of any further expansion of managed care.

But the issue that garnered the greatest attention was the Fiscal Year 2022 budget. This time a year ago, we were facing a very uncertain economic picture. Between the pandemic shutdown and already low oil and gas prices, we were facing a $1.3 billion revenue shortfall. We utilized emergency savings and opted for careful, targeted reductions, and made the decision not to appropriate the full amount of funds we could have in order to put us on a more stable foundation for this year’s budget.

Those fiscally conservative measures, coupled with an economy that quickly rebounded when Oklahoma opened back up, have helped us deliver a budget this session that prioritizes education, makes targeted investments in other core services, and replenishes our emergency savings to help us mitigate future economic downturns.

This budget increases common education funding to a record high of $3.2 billion that will trigger class size reductions in kindergarten and first grade. I’m especially proud of this investment, which builds on other crucial increases we’ve made in recent years on behalf of our public schools.

This budget also includes a nearly 18% increase for REAP, the Rural Economic Action Plan. This $15.5 million appropriation will assist with much-need infrastructure projects in rural Oklahoma. Another boon for rural Oklahoma is a $42 million tax incentive for providers to expand broadband in underserved and unserved areas throughout Oklahoma. Having access to high-speed internet is critical for economic development and for education. This is one of many actions we’ve taken this session to address this tremendous need.

Additionally, this budget restores funding to various state pension funds used last year to mitigate the impact of pandemic-related budget reductions.

This is a budget that prioritizes education, core services and makes targeted investments to spur economic development, ensuring Oklahoma continues to advance from the effects of the pandemic and continues to grow and thrive as a state.