Work continues at the state Capitol. Thursday, April 23 marked the deadline for Senate committees to consider legislation that started in the House of Representatives – likewise, House committees had to conclude their work on legislation that began here in the Senate. The next deadline is on May 7 for floor votes on bills that made it through the committee process.

The big issue in the spotlight has shifted to state questions the majority party is pushing to get before voters this fall. Many of them are policy issues I’m concerned about, and I’m not sure that Senate Democrats are going to support, because they actually undermine voters’ voices. There have been two different state questions brought forth about Medicaid expansion, better known in Oklahoma as SoonerCare, for working adults. We have another state question about how judges are picked, and one about the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET), the state entity dealing with our tobacco settlement money that Oklahomans voted long ago to protect so that legislators couldn’t control those funds. There’s also a potential state question dealing with property taxes.

First of all, most of these state questions are issues that have previously been decided by voters.