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Oklahoma
Posted: May 27, 2022 9:09 AMUpdated: May 27, 2022 9:09 AM
Capitol Call 5-27-22
Tom Davis
Appearing on CAPITOL CALL Powered by Phillips 66 on Friday, State Senator julie Daniels left the Senate floor to bring us up to date by phone on the Oklahoma Legislature's call for a concurrent special session beginning today that will extend into the summer and allow lawmakers to have more control of the use of American Rescue Plan Act funding, sending it through a more typical appropriation process.
Daniels calls the discussions over the ARPA funds a "fight over Monopoly money" saying these funds are "printed money that's, in part, to blame for the economic inflation we are witnessing."
The special session call also authorizes lawmakers to consider the expenditure of other federal funding, as well as provisions of the LEAD Act passed into law this spring in an effort to recruit a planned Panasonic battery plant to Oklahoma. But the move primarily involves ARPA funding, and it appears intended to limit Gov. Kevin Stitt’s ability to have final say over how to spend $1.87 billion in federal relief money.
Last year, lawmakers created their Joint Committee on Pandemic Relief Funding and established a framework for accepting project applications and evaluating proposals to use the $1.87 billion in ARPA funds directed to state government. Under that agreement, the JCPRF’s working groups vet projects, the joint committee makes recommendations and a steering group would pass the recommendations to Stitt.
Wednesday’s announcement indicates that tension between lawmakers and Gov. Kevin Stitt has risen to the point that legislative leaders have decided to appropriate funding in an official session, instead of making recommendations on which Stitt would ultimately act. The Legislature’s joint committee has already recommended a handful of ARPA projects for approval, but the Stitt administration has not announced his decision on those early recommendations, which include broadband internet mapping and youth behavioral mental health hospital expansion.
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