Every bill in special session at Oklahoma Capitol passes House, Senate
More than $1 billion worth of COVID-19 relief money now awaits the signature of the governor.
More than $1 billion worth of COVID-19 relief money now awaits the signature of the governor.
More than $1 billion worth of COVID-19 relief money now awaits the signature of the governor.
Every single bill that was part of the special session Friday at the Oklahoma Capitol passed both the House and the Senate.
More than $1 billion worth of COVID-19 relief money now awaits the signature of the governor. On Friday, KOCO 5 spoke with Senate leadership about what projects they think will have the most impact.
"I'm proud of the work that both the senate and the house did working together to achieve this and republicans and democrats participated in a very meaningful way," said Sen. Greg Treat, (R) President Pro Tempore.
Treat spoke with reporters on Friday, boasting of the relief money that was dolled out as part of the special session that took place this week.
"Through this process, we saw there are many needs in Oklahoma," Treat said.
More than $500 million was passed for broadband expansion that pays for building out infrastructure and mapping where broadband reaches. $87 million was passed to create a new facility for Griffin Memorial Hospital and expand bed capacity.
$50 million will go toward OSU Pharmaceutical to research opioid use and abuse and $25 million for the YWCA to expand outside school hours childcare. Despite all the bills passing, there was opposition to using the funding by several Republicans.
"Legislative leaders have called us into the special session for the purpose of forking out almost 2 billion dollars to grow government to special interest groups and to eventually and inevitably explode inflation further than what the people of Oklahoma are currently experiencing,” said Sen. Nathan Dahm, (R) Broken Arrow.
Treat also believes federal spending is to blame for inflation but disagrees, which means Oklahoma shouldn’t take advantage of the money that was allotted to the state.
"This money is in the economy. We accepted it. It's in the state treasurer's office actually. We accepted it. I think we're going to maximize its benefit, that was a minority viewpoint within the chamber," Treat said.
Unless lawmakers are called into another special session, they shouldn’t have to return to the Capitol as a group again until February.