2014 Legislative Agenda and Pressing Issues

With every passing month I have had the honor of serving in the Oklahoma Legislature, I am reminded of the blessings our state have been given, but also the challenges that we face. I believe that Oklahoma is truly a beacon of hope for our nation. However, with every blessing comes the responsibility to face our every challenge head on. As we begin this 2014 legislative session many of these challenges face us as difficult issues that frequent news headlines. They are the many issues that I hear about on a daily basis from constituents and advocates. Yet I remain positive in my belief of Oklahoma, and the hope that we will “not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer,” as President John F. Kennedy said.

There will be multiple issues I will be focusing on this year as we seek to move our state forward. As I have done every year since I was first elected I want to give details of every bill I am currently principle author of:

-          HB2954, which creates a revolving fund that uses a small percentage of existing oil and gas taxes to create CNG infrastructure within county vehicle fleets. The legislation creates massive county savings from unleaded fuel costs and the bill is a constituent request.

-          HB1887, which is leftover from 2013. The legislation couples election dates for school board positions with municipal elections. It encourages greater participation in school board races and creates cost savings. The bill is a constituent  request.

-          HB1888, which  is also leftover from 2013. It creates a “one stop shop” website for open records requests. The legislation streamlines the process and makes open records documents easily accessible. 

-          HB1890, which revises sex offender “zone of safety.” The legislation revises age restriction. It is a request from Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Office.

-          HB2955, which updates current Oklahoma bomb squad statutes with clearer intent language and equips law enforcement to better prevent terrorist activities. The legislation is a constituent request.

-          HB2956, which allows for certain broader incentives to small businesses through the Small Employer Quality Jobs Small Incentive Act. The legislation promotes greater opportunities for small businesses.

-          HB2957, which eliminates fingerprinting procedures for SDA concealed carry license application. It is a constituent request.  

-          HB2958, the forgiveness bill, which allows for application of SDA concealed carry license by persons convicted of drug related misdemeanor provided 10 years have passed since last conviction. The legislation is a constituent request.

-          HB2959, which creates the Oklahoma – A STEM State of Mind Act to promote STEM education and provides for further opportunities in the career tech system.

-          HB2960, which authorizes military courts to use video conferencing for long distance court proceedings. It is a constituent request.

-          HB2961, which authorizes road service vehicle companies to use certain flashing lights on road service vehicles. It is a constituent request.

Keep in mind that these are only the introduced versions of these bills. Language can and often does change dramatically throughout the course of a session. To view complete language of each of mine and other member’s legislation, go to: www.okhouse.gov/legislation

As we view the overall challenges that we face this year, there are a couple areas that I believe we must address. I will continue to push for a “Priority based Budget” that encourages growth through freedom, and prosperity through funding our core responsibilities before conveniences. We must realize there are specific responsibilities we are required to and should fund first. Our Department of Public Safety, Corrections Department, and State Employees are due a pay raise but have not been given one in almost a decade. Our rural schools have taken cuts and are having to make decisions on whether or not to retain certain teachers and programs because they simply can’t afford to keep them. We have a public pension system that is multiple billions of dollars in debt and needs to be shored up to ensure retirees retain their full retirement. All of this can sound bleak and like political rhetoric, but in reality I believe it is truly possible to move our state in a positive direction. We must assure that our priorities are in the right place and we are being efficient and responsible with every cent of the taxpayer’s money. Government cannot create wealth. Government only redistributes that wealth. I will continue to fight for an Oklahoma government which does only what is necessary with your money, and leaves the rest to you. That is when government works and the individual prospers.

Making sure our education system is focused around the child should be every individual’s passion. I believe in a strong local school that can make the necessary curricular, employer, and financial decisions without fear of overreach from the state or federal government. Local control of our schools is best. Parents, Teachers, and local Administrators know what each student needs much better than Oklahoma City or Washington D.C. Our education system’s appropriations which receive over 53% of our annual budget, common core curriculum, graduation and testing requirements, and teacher’s pay raises will all be discussed this year. I am committed to our teachers and receiving the funds it takes to run our schools properly. I support a teacher’s pay raise, but no additional dollars for any area will be available unless we cut back on spending of conveniences in state government and place those funds towards state responsibilities.

We have a long road ahead of us, but we've already come a long way. It is an honor to serve you. It matters not if you are Republican, Democrat, or Independent; I am here to serve you. I just added a new website to enhance your ability to communicate your desires and ideas with me as well as see where I stand on any range of topics. www.FriendsofJoshCockroft.com also has a link to my policy blog: www.RepJoshCockroft.blogspot.com where you can keep up with what is happening in Oklahoma City. Communication is important to me. I want to know how to I can better serve and lead for our district and our state. I am always a phone call away at: 405-557-7349. Our legislative session is always fast paced and hectic, but knowing where each individual stands on the issues is invaluable to me. Looking forward to another great year!

Prioritized Budget A Must For 2014 Session

Recently a story surfaced referencing a comment made by Governor Mary Fallin’s staff claiming that current low staffing levels at our state prisons is adequate to provide for the safety of the corrections officers and the general public.

Having a correctional facility in my district and hearing from multiple employees, I could not disagree more.

Corrections officers are currently working mandatory overtime and double-shifts. This is not just a temporary thing or a new problem. Without raising pay and attracting new corrections officers, it will continue, day in and day out.

Without a pay raise, we can also expect the situation to get worse. In fact, a pay raise will only be a small step in the direction of recruiting new corrections officers and retaining those who are already there.

Public safety must be a priority for us in the Oklahoma Legislature and real reform of our public safety system, including pay raises should be looked at as soon as possible. I am aware that the budget is not conducive to any pay raises this year, but when our priorities include giving away large tax breaks to corporations who do not need them and spending too much on non-essential services, we arrive at the current public safety crisis we are at today. True conservative policy prioritizes core functions before conveniences.

This year, House members will be looking at the state compensation system, which is rife with a variety of problems. In general, public employees are paid below the market value of their work and that makes it extremely difficult to retain good employees, or in the case of corrections, enough employees. Generally, the state pension system is a slightly higher percentage than in the private sector, but since that percentage is based on salary, the amount that public employees receive in pension benefits is actually less than in the private sector.

I hope that my fellow lawmakers and I will be able to persuade the Governor of the importance of approving pay raises for our hardworking corrections officers.

Never hesitate to contact me. Email me at: Josh.Cockroft@okhouse.gov. Call me at: (405) 557-7349. Follow me on Facebook: Representative Josh Cockroft, and Twitter: @VoteCockroft27.

Wishing You The Very Best 2014!

As we close out yet another year and usher in 2014, may we be ever mindful of the blessings we have been given. Looking back on a year that was full of challenges, struggles, and new opportunities for those in Pottawatomie and Cleveland counties I believe we stand stronger now than we did at the beginning. It is never easy to watch your community struggle through a challenge like the natural disasters this spring, but the joy of seeing individuals of every faith, political persuasion, age, and lifestyle come together for their neighbors and friends far outweighs those challenges. I have never been so proud to be a part of a community that selflessly laid aside their own needs for the good of a complete stranger. I have never been more honored to play a leadership role than in helping begin the recovery and relief efforts for those affected.

The amazing thing about New Year’s is it stands for a new beginning; a clean slate. No matter what your 2013 held, your 2014 stands ready to welcome you. No matter where you are in your life. No matter what the political challenges are at the current time. No matter what situation you find yourself in today; you are blessed. We are all blessed beyond measure. Blessed to live in a state with a strong economy that holds common sense family values dear. Blessed to live in the most free and prosperous nation on earth. Blessed to simply draw another breath.

So as 2013 ends, pause and take account of your blessings. Set your focus on the year ahead and charge towards it with a new passion. We never know what the future holds, but I for one am glad I know who holds my future.

I am extremely honored to continue serving as your state representative. Your prayers, thoughts, concerns, and insight are always appreciated. With God’s help I will continue to serve to the best of my ability. Please feel free to always contact me at my office or stop me and chat if you see me out in district. That is why I am here.

Looking forward to 2014,

Representative Josh Cockroft

House Calls for Citizen Input on Speak Up Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA CITY – In ongoing efforts to increase public participation in state policy discussions, the Oklahoma House of Representatives is seeking input from citizens for the 2014 legislative session through a new portal called Speak Up Oklahoma.

Oklahomans can register to weigh in on policy discussions and polls at www.speakupoklahoma.com, said Joel Kintsel, House parliamentarian and administrator. To participate, Oklahomans must simply fill out a short registry form before voting on policy ideas and polls, or simply submitting an idea of their own.

“The Oklahoma House has worked to become increasingly transparent,” Kintsel said. “In past years, we have introduced live video of session online, made votes available online and basically taken advantage of emerging technologies and software to create additional ways to connect state lawmakers with their constituents.”

Matt Hall, community manager at Granicus, Inc., the software provider for the website said the Oklahoma House of Representatives is joining a number of government entities that are making use of an open discussion forum.

“The Oklahoma House is a part of a wave of innovative state and local governments that are bringing citizens and government together online,” Hall said.

Leading up to the 2014 legislative session, House staff has posed questions for citizens to respond to and will continue to prompt Oklahomans to join the conversation, Kintsel said.

The new service is powered through a platform called CivicIdeas™, created by Granicus, Inc. a San Francisco-based company. The platform is specifically designed to help government agencies gather meaningful and measurable feedback from the public. Currently, Granicus provides transparency and community collaboration solutions to more than 1,000 local, state, and federal government agencies across the U.S. and Canada.

Rep. Cockroft - CNG Infrastructure Plan A Priority for Next Session

With Oklahoma’s legislative session rapidly approaching it’s time for legislators to compile all the issues we worked on over the summer and begin crafting legislation. We must have all our legislative ideas submitted to the House Clerk by December 13^th, so these next couple weeks will be full of narrowing down issues each member wishes to look at. Every member is allowed to introduce an unlimited amount of bills, but is only guaranteed to have eight placed in a committee where they could be heard. The rest are placed in the Rules committee and can only be brought out on the Speaker’s request. With the busyness of this year there are many different issues I am looking at. Over the next couple of months I will be keeping you up to date on what I am working on and will be pushing this next legislative session.

    One issue that I will push deals with our State’s CNG capabilities and infrastructure. Anyone who has looked into converting or purchasing a CNG vehicle knows there are currently tremendous cost and infrastructure hurdles that face them. A simple conversion can cost around $9,000 and purchasing a new CNG vehicle can be around $35,000. Not cheap. Additionally, after the purchase is the challenge of where to fuel your vehicle. It’s not easy to find a CNG filling station in our state yet; one of the reasons why the technology is still so expensive.

    This bill was crafted with the help of Cleveland County Commissioner Rod Cleveland’s office and will have two major areas of focus. First, providing a better infrastructure for CNG filling stations across Oklahoma, and secondly, funding for updating the State and County vehicle fleets for CNG use saving millions of dollars in the process. To provide better access for the public, counties, and state alike each county would enter into a public-private partnership with a top competitive bidder CNG company to place a filling station on county property to be used by the public and county/state CNG fleets. That’s a potential of 231 additional CNG filling stations across the state when placing a filling station in each county district; many of which are in rural areas. This would be a win-win for everyone. The counties and the state could fill their vehicles where there currently is no ability to do so, and the public could do the same; providing tremendous profit for the CNG provider.

Currently there are a little over 2,400 county vehicles being used across the state; 5,000 if you count law enforcement. This is where the taxpayer savings come in. ODOT (Oklahoma Department of Transportation) conducted a study in 2012, converting 150 ODOT vehicles and tracking money spent over a 5 month period. At the end of that period, just based on fuel costs they saved $163,000 by using CNG. The average price of unleaded fuel is $2.22 more than that of CNG. Imagine the savings if we converted those 5,000 vehicles, plus all of ODOT’s vehicles to run on CNG! My bill will place a percentage of the gross production tax (an oil and gas tax) out of the general revenue and evenly back to all counties to update their light vehicle fleets over a ten year period or until the fleet is updated. This is not a new tax, but merely taking a consumption tax that is taken from oil and gas and placing it back where it belongs.

I am a firm believer in CNG and believe the more we can do to promote and build it up, the better it will be for our state. This idea has gained huge support from state and local leadership, both Democrats and Republicans, rural and urban areas, as well as large corporations such as Clean Energy, Halliburton, Loves, and On-Cue. I look forward to working on this issue over the next year.

 What are your thoughts? What would you like me to focus on in the coming session? I’m always a phone call or email away. Call my office at: 405-557-7349. Email my office at: Josh.Cockroft@okhouse.gov. Follow me on FaceBook: Representative Josh Cockroft, and on Twitter: @VoteCockroft27. It is an honor to serve you!

Cockroft Column: Local Control Still The Answer

In the months following the tragic tornadoes this past spring there have been many issues that have been brought to the forefront of Oklahoma politics, but no issue has gained attention like that of availability of storm shelters across the state. Living in Oklahoma provides the distinct possibility individuals at home or work, as well as school students at their schools will have to take shelter from severe weather at some point in their lives. There has been one possible solution that has gained the attention of the media that I wanted to address.

    One of my colleagues in the House of Representatives, Rep. Joe Dorman (D-Rush Springs) has started an effort towards an initiative petition to place on the ballot next November a $500 Million statewide bond issue to help local school districts pay for safe-room shelters in their schools. This petition would require 155,000 signatures from registered voters in the State of Oklahoma. State law gives supporters of a petition 90 days after it is filed to gather the signatures necessary, or 90 days after the Supreme Court determines the petition is sufficient.

    First off, I applaud Rep. Dorman and his efforts to look for a solution to this problem. As someone who represents an area hit hard by the storms it is very pleasing to see other lawmakers outside of this area look for ways to help and have a willingness to address the issues. I am very appreciative of that!

    However, I cannot agree that this is the right approach to addressing the problem of safe-room shelters in schools. I firmly believe that each school should have some sort of safe-room or location that can be used as an adequate shelter. My opposition is not to whether or not schools should have shelters; it is in the approach that has been taken. I don’t believe this is a state issue. I believe that each individual school district should continue to have the power to set bonds and make this a priority if they see fit.

     I have always been a huge supporter of local control in our education system so that each district has control over their needs and desires. It is somewhat surprising to me seeing Rep. Dorman who is also a proponent of local control pushing a non-local solution. If our schools see this as a priority, they have the ability to take control of this issue already without placing further bonded indebtedness upon our state.

    As with any issue, there has been mixed reactions within my district and the education community on this issue. There is much hesitation from a state standpoint as well. In my conversations with the Oklahoma Emergency Management Office as well as the Governor’s Office, they agree that this should be and is a local issue. However they have assured me that should this petition be placed on the ballot and passed next November, they will be ready with a plan to effectively and responsibly allocate this large amount of funds. They are already working on plans and guidelines on how this money will be spent and distributed to school districts across the state.

    Now that you know how I feel, let me know your thoughts. Please don’t hesitate to contact my office and share your opinion on this, or any other topic. My office can be reached at: 405-557-7349, or Josh.Cockroft@okhouse.gov. You can also follow me on Facebook: Representative Josh Cockroft, or Twitter: @VoteCockroft27. It is an honor to represent you at the State Capitol!

Weekly Column: Oklahoma Republicans Fighting Federal Intrusion

Did you know that there is approximately $60 trillion in currency currently circulating throughout the world? That is all the money that currently exists. Did you know that, when accounting for unfunded liabilities in Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, the United States currently has a debt of nearly $130 trillion? You read that correctly: the United States currently owes more than twice as much debt than could possibly be paid with all the money in the entire world.

It is not hyperbole to suggest that our nation is facing a fiscal crisis. In fact, two of the primary responsibilities of elected officials are to warn citizens of our financial situation and to take actions to correct it.

Oklahoma House Speaker T.W. Shannon (R-Lawton) has been doing that from the moment the Republican caucus elected him to lead the Oklahoma House of Representatives. Speaker Shannon has actively resisted implementing the federal “common core” educational standards and created the first standing legislative committee focused on protecting our state from federal intrusion. The House States’ Rights Committee was an active and integral part of the 2013 legislative session, hearing dozens of bills and resolutions that sought a balance between federal and state law.

One of Speaker Shannon’s first actions was to hold a legislative study last November to determine how state agency budgets would look if no federal funds were available to supplement their programs. Why? The reason is obvious. Our federal government is broke, yet federal funds make up more than 40 percent of our annual state budget. It seems reasonable to ask our state agencies to plan and prioritize spending on core mission efforts in the event the federal gravy train is closed.

Unfortunately, after winning broad legislative approval from both the House and Senate, Gov. Mary Fallin vetoed Shannon’s bill that would have required the agencies to comply and develop a contingency plan and budget for a 25-percent cut in federal funding. Fallin called the measure “duplicative” and “burdensome,” a decision that seems rather shortsighted given the current government shutdown our nation is embroiled in.

Even still, most of the Republican caucus supports those efforts to reduce dependency on the federal government because we know that Oklahomans can take care of Oklahoma. We don’t need the federal government to subsidize marginally useful and shockingly inefficient programs. The truth is, if Oklahomans believe those federally funded programs are so important, then they would be willing to pay more in state taxes to fund them, but, overwhelmingly, Oklahomans want lower taxes. In fact, a March 2013 survey conducted by SoonerPoll found that that 65 percent of likely Oklahoma voters would prefer to phase out the income tax without raising other taxes.

To me, that is clear evidence that Oklahomans want less dependency on the federal government and want their legislators to develop Oklahoma solutions to Oklahoma problems. I am proud of Speaker Shannon and my colleagues in the Republican caucus for standing up to the federal government and fighting to protect the individual liberty of every Oklahoman. And I am looking forward to taking up the battle again in 2014!

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to represent you at the Capitol. As always, I will keep you updated on the status of our great state. God bless you and God bless Oklahoma!

As always, feel free to contact me at (405) 557-7349 or at josh.cockroft@okhouse.gov.