Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

On Jan. 5, the legislature will be convening for an organizational day to officially elect leadership, adopt session rules and take care of some other house keeping matters. Session will then begin on Feb. 1 at noon with the governor’s State of the State Address, where he’ll present his Executive Budget, which includes his budget proposal and agenda items he’d like to see tackled this session. His budget will use the Board of Equalization’s preliminary revenue estimate of $8.5 billion, which was released Friday. They’ll then reassess state revenues and certify the official amount in late February, and the legislature is constitutionally bound to pass a balanced budget using that updated amount.

For the next several weeks, the Redistricting Committee will continue traveling around the state for town hall meetings to educate and involve citizens in the redistricting process. The census population count will be used to determine federal funding for hundreds of government programs and services in Oklahoma over the next decade, but it also is used by the state legislature to redraw state legislative districts and congressional districts.

This week, we learned about Maptitude, which is the program that will be used for redistricting. You can find a schedule of Senate redistricting meetings at www.oksenate.gov and watch them virtually. Please mark your calendars for the Ponca City meeting on Jan. 14 at 6 p.m. in the Summit Conference Room at City Central. House meetings can be viewed at www.okhouse.gov. We welcome your input on this important process. Questions, comments and ideas can be shared at redistricting@oksenate.gov.