Governor Brad Henry's 2006 Legislative Agenda
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For more details and other items in the governor's legislative agenda, please consult the FY-2007 Executive Budget that will be released Monday during the State of the State Speech.
- EDUCATION, Record education budget and teacher pay raises
- Implement a $256 million increase for all three branches of education, including funds for teacher pay raises, classroom resources, college scholarships and career tech programs. Teachers retirement system
- Invest $100 million in surplus funds to strengthen the financially troubled Oklahoma Teachers Retirement System. - HEALTH CARE, Prescription for Savings
- Allow Oklahomans and Oklahoma pharmacists to reimport more affordable, FDA
-approved prescription drugs from Canada and other industrialized countries (SB 1434 by Adelson). Insure Oklahoma program
- Expand program that helps small businesses provide health insurance to their employees, raising program limits from 25 to 50 employees (SB 1294 by Adelson). State nurse pay raise
- Boost pay by an average of 10 percent depending on job classification, other factors. Nursing homes
- Increase Medicaid reimbursement rate for nursing homes to help provide better care. - JOB CREATION, EDGE research endowment
- Invest an additional $100 million in the EDGE endowment, a special fund created at the governor's request last year to fund research and education (SB 1957 by Fisher). Economic Opportunity Fund
- Create new fund to help Oklahoma better compete for new jobs. With an initial deposit of $100 million, the fund would help state leaders close economic development deals (SJR 52 by Fisher). Invest for the Future
- Strengthen Oklahoma's research infrastructure with a $180 million bond issue to finance a diabetes research center at OU, sensor research at OSU and a number of other research projects around the state. Targeted tax relief
- Implement a back-to-school sales tax holiday the first weekend in August (SB 1665 by Gumm), expand estate tax exemption to include collateral heirs (HB 1407 by Askins) and cut incomes taxes for retirees (SB 2016 by Gumm). Expand Rainy Day Fund
- Expand state savings account to better prepare for future downturns. Raise fund cap from 10 to 15 percent of general revenue (HJR 1050 by McPeak, SJR 53 by Fisher) - ROADS AND BRIDGES, Road to Progress
- Enact a comprehensive bridge and highway maintenance program. It would immediately allocate $100 million to fix the most dangerous bridges across the states. It would also incrementally increase transportation funding over a 10-year period, adding a total of $520 million in new funds. Coupled with last year's HB 1078, it will mean $1.9 billion in new road funds over the next decade (SJR 58 by Corn). - PUBLIC SAFETY
Operation Firewall- Invest an additional $16.5 million into state firefighting efforts, including dollars for equipment, manpower and training. Approximately $5 million would be approved as an emergency appropriation and distributed to volunteer firefighters and the agriculture department's forestry division.
Mission MethNet - Address both the supply and demand in the dangerous methamphetamine trade. It would put more agents on the street to go after Mexican meth importers, toughen penalties for major dealers and create an education and treatment program to keep Oklahomans off the drug (SB 1713 by Wyrick).
SafeNet - Create a special OSBI team to target pedophiles who prey on children over the Internet. It also toughens penalties for such offenders (SB 1479 by Wilson).
Sex offender registry - Strengthen registry with better registration and community notification (HB 2569 by Kiesel).
Corrections officers - Provide additional funding to hire new corrections officers and boost pay to assist retention.
Child abuse investigators
- To address abuse cases, hire 112 new investigators over two years. - STATE EMPLOYEES, State employee pay raise
- A 3 percent increase for all state employees with bigger pay raises for critical fields such as child abuse investigators, corrections officers and state nurses.
