House, Senate Democrats Vie For Transparency In State Budget Process
Update: The Senate passed the $8.3 billion state budget restoring COVID-19 cuts and boosting education funding in a 38-9 vote. The budget has now been sent to the governor.
Oklahoma House and Senate Democrats blasted the state budget process saying all Oklahomans lose when just a few lawmakers come up with the budget behind closed doors.
“We’re sitting in the meeting, and we are being handed bills that we are about to be asked to vote on, and this is not an exaggeration, the bills are actually sometimes warm because they just came off the printers,” Senate Minority Leaders Kay Floyd, D-OKC, said.
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Patti Davis
OKLAHOMA CITY â Despite an influx of hundreds of millions of federal dollars earmarked to help pay for Medicaid expansion, lawmakers are proposing increasing fees paid by hospitals with the money to be used for the same purpose.
âWhile weâre not opposed to doing our part to increase access to care, we are disappointed that the Legislature chose not to use the hospital fee as a backstop considering that we have federal funds available for the next eight quarters,â said Patti Davis, president of Oklahoma Hospital Association.
She said the stateâs hospitals still are in ârecovery modeâ from the pandemic, and they would prefer legislators would first use the hundreds of millions in additional federal funding before increasing their assessment rate.
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