{"id":23670,"date":"2015-04-23T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=23670"},"modified":"2015-04-23T18:37:01","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T23:37:01","slug":"update-what-stateimpact-is-watching-in-oklahomas-2015-legislative-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/04\/23\/update-what-stateimpact-is-watching-in-oklahomas-2015-legislative-session\/","title":{"rendered":"Update: What StateImpact Is Watching In Oklahoma&#8217;s 2015 Legislative Session"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"module image alignright mceTemp\" id=\"attachment_23682\" style=\"width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-23682\" alt=\"20150424-Capitol001_WEB\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/04\/20150424-Capitol001_WEB-620x413.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Matthew Rutledge \/ Flickr<\/p>\n<\/div><p>There\u2019s only about a month left in Oklahoma\u2019s 2015 legislative session, and if bills haven\u2019t made it out of the chamber they started in by now, they\u2019re dead.<\/p><p>Of the bills of interest to us at StateImpact, the highest profile place new restrictions the wind industry and reduce local control over oil and gas activities. Wind farms <i>have been<\/i> getting a reimbursement on their property taxes, but that will almost certainly end if <a title=\"okleglink\" href=\"http:\/\/oklegislature.gov\/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=SB498\" target=\"_blank\">Senate Bill 498<\/a> get\u2019s to Governor Mary Fallin\u2019s desk. Last Thursday, Republican Representative Earl Sears told the House his bill has the blessing of the wind industry.<\/p><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/202140625&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=false\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p><p><!--more-->\u201cAfter months, and I literally mean months of negotiations, we have come to an agreement,\u201d said on the House floor.<\/p><p>Representative David Brumbaugh asked Sears, given how much wind power is now produced in Oklahoma, if the property tax incentive had reached the limit of its effectiveness.<\/p><p>There is no question we wanted to incentivize this industry,\u201d Sears said. \u201cWe\u2019ve done that. It\u2019s a resounding success in the state of Oklahoma. And the time is now to have a modest \u2014 come in and look at these particular credits, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p><p>One bill that\u2019s already been signed by the governor would limit the placement of wind turbines. <a title=\"okleglink\" href=\"http:\/\/oklegislature.gov\/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=SB%20808\" target=\"_blank\">Under the bill<\/a>, they could be built no closer than one and a half nautical miles from airports, public schools, and hospitals.<\/p><p>Concerns about water quality and the massive uptick in earthquakes have some residents in Stillwater, Norman, and other cities <a title=\"StateImpactLink\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/03\/19\/local-officials-raise-new-questions-as-anti-frack-ban-legislation-makes-progress\/\" target=\"_blank\">pushing their local officials<\/a> for tougher rules on oil and gas drilling. There are several bills that would put a stop to that sort of thing in Oklahoma, by banning such bans. <a title=\"Okleglink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.oklegislature.gov\/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=HB2178&Session=1500\" target=\"_blank\">One that\u2019s shown momentum<\/a> was authored by House Speaker Jeff Hickman.<\/p><p>\u201cMembers, you may have seen in the news recently about some of the things that have been going on in Texas, in the community of Denton, where a handful of people were able to ban fracking in Denton,\u201d Hickman said on the House floor.<\/p><p>Hickman\u2019s bill passed the full House and is now awaiting action on the Senate side. And that\u2019s not the only bill that\u2019s keeping environmentalists up at night. <a title=\"StateImpactLink\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/03\/12\/right-to-farm-inches-closer-to-ballot-after-breezing-through-oklahoma-house\/\" target=\"_blank\">Right-to-farm is breezing through the process<\/a>. If passed, Oklahomans would vote on whether to add broad language to the state constitution protecting the ag industry from animal rights groups like the Humane Society of the U.S., which is <a title=\"StateImpactLink\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/04\/06\/opponents-launch-ad-attack-to-keep-right-to-farm-off-ballot-in-oklahoma\/\" target=\"_blank\">blasting right-to-farm on TV<\/a>.<\/p><p><a title=\"Okleglink\" href=\"http:\/\/oklegislature.gov\/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=HJR1012\" target=\"_blank\">The right-to-farm bill<\/a> passed the state House 90 to 6 in March, and had no problem passing the Senate, but will have to go back to the House after being amended.<\/p><p>Coming into the session, it looked like water was going to be a big issue. There was the Regional Water Planning Act, the Regional Water Development Act, and the Regional Water Sustainability Act \u2014 all from eastern Oklahoma lawmakers hoping to keep water from being moved out of their districts. None of their efforts survived.<\/p><p>Also dead is\u00a0<a title=\"Okleglink\" href=\"http:\/\/oklegislature.gov\/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=SB760\" target=\"_blank\">Altus Republican Mike Shulz\u2019 bill<\/a> to study the possibility of transferring water from the east to the drought-stricken west.<\/p><p>And for three years, StateImpact has followed the effort to impose a tax on limestone and sand miners in south-central Oklahoma\u2019s sensitive Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer. Much of that material is mined by Texas companies and sent south of the Red River. Atoka Representative Charles McCall says there\u2019s very little benefit in that deal for his constituents.<\/p><p>\u201cThe problem at the heart of this issue is that these minerals that are severed \u2014 there is no financial benefit for the counties that lose these,\u201d McCall said on the House floor. \u201cWe are not imposing a tax today. We are doing nothing more than authorizing the people who elected us to make the decision that is best for their county.\u201d<\/p><p>The idea got further than it ever has, passing the full House. But, it died in a Senate Committee. Maybe next year.<\/p><p><em>Correction and clarification: An earlier version of this post and the audio version of the same story mentioned that SB760 \u2014 the bill to study water transfers \u2014 was still alive. The bill is now dead after not being considered by the House Rules Committee.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s only about a month left in Oklahoma\u2019s 2015 legislative session, and if bills haven\u2019t made it out of the chamber they started in by now, they\u2019re dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":23682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[490,491],"tags":[630,12,238,447,239,427,144],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23670"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23704,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23670\/revisions\/23704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}