Oklahoma Senate plans to end state budget secrecy. Will it work?

The Oklahoma Senate will launch a major transparency initiative next year that targets the budget writing process.

Senate Pro Tempore Greg Treat, who outlined the plan in an interview with The Oklahoman, announced at a Capitol news conference Monday that the public transparency effort will dramatically change the way the Senate develops a state budget. “It’s a whole different way of doing budgeting,” he said. “It’s a complete redo on the Senate side. It’s a wholesale change.”

Treat, a Republican from Oklahoma City, said his new proposal will eliminate the "dog and pony show" atmosphere from presession budget hearings. He said next year’s presession hearings — which start Tuesday ― will shift from a promotional event to a rigorous question-and-answer session.

“We’re going to have the subcommittees run a truly open meeting,” he said. “In the past ... maybe two or four members show up. The agency speaks for 30 minutes, then they leave two minutes for questions. It’s all about everything they are doing is awesome and they just need more resources.”

Those type of meetings, Treat said, are terrible.

'It's not gonna be death by PowerPoint'

Instead, Treat said the new pre-budget meetings will open with tough questions to each agency. Treat said Sen. Roger Thompson, the Senate's budget chairman, will give each subcommittee chairman a percentage of revenue to allocate. He said Thompson will set the percentage for each area of state government and members will then vote in open meetings on what the budget for their agencies should look like.

The subcommittees, Treat said, will do the heavy lifting on setting budget priorities of the Senate.

"It's not gonna be death by PowerPoint," he said. “If they (state agencies) want appropriations for projects they deem important for their agency, they are going to come before us and answer questions. We are not going to allow them to get money without coming (to budget meetings) and us asking tough questions.”

While the Senate’s plan could make major improvements in the way lawmakers address budget issues, it also forces the House of Representatives into the spotlight. Each year the governor's office submits a budget proposal to lawmakers but, in the end, the state's budget is actually crafted by the Senate and the House of Representatives with limited input from the governor.

More: Oklahoma's budget is historically negotiated behind closed doors. Lawmakers want to change that

Treat's new initiative will put pressure on the House of Representatives to change its process in a similar way. Treat said he briefed House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, on the Senate’s new plan late last week.

“He (McCall) didn’t have a whole lot to say,” Treat said. “He wasn’t visibly agitated, but just thanked me for the information."

Treat's plan also drew praise from the Senate's minority leader. In a media statement, Sen. Kay Floyd, D-Oklahoma City, said she was pleased that Senate leadership acknowledged the necessity of a transparent budget process.

"Oklahomans deserve a clear explanation of where their tax dollars are going and why," Floyd said. "This process has been out of the public eye for far too long, and I hope this new approach will enable us to craft a budget that better meets the needs of Oklahomans.”

Once the agency hearings with subcommittees are complete, Treat said the subcommittee chairman “will stand in front of the full appropriations committee and advocate for whatever that subcommittee has actually come up with.”

By the seventh week of the session, around spring break, Treat said the Senate will adopt a public resolution on its budget priorities. “It won’t look exactly like a general appropriations bill but will be something more like a spreadsheet.”

That resolution will be the Senate’s starting position on budget negotiations.

Only after the Senate votes on its budget resolution, will it begin to negotiate the budget with representatives from the House and the governor’s office. “There are some people that say, ‘Hey, you’re giving (it) away. You can’t keep anything hidden and to try to negotiate.’ That’s our goal,” Treat said. “To not keep things hidden.”

In addition to the other changes, Treat said the Senate would move to a single session on Wednesday, so members would have more time to address budget issues. "We are going to dedicate long days on Wednesday to getting actually budget work done," he said.

Oklahoma legislators, Gov. Kevin Stitt have both called for more budget transparency

The senator’s plan effectively eliminates what has been affectionately known at the Legislature as a "woolybooger" — a hidden line-item that’s quietly attached to a budget bill late in the process and is unknown to most lawmakers until well after the budget is passed and signed into law.

“At the end of session when these things come out, that’s where bad things happen,” he said. “We’re gonna show all of our cards.”

The pro tempore’s call for changes follows Gov. Kevin Stitt’s call for a special session earlier this fall. In late September, Stitt called lawmakers into an October special session to address tax cuts and make the budget process more transparent.

“I called this special session for three things,” Stitt said. “Number One is budget transparency. Let’s make sure the budget is more transparent and we have more time to look at it. I just ask for 72 hours to look over the budget.”

The Legislature met on Oct. 3, then quickly adjourned the special session.

While Treat said he expects the governor to take credit for the Senate’s embrace of better transparency, he said he has been working to make the budget process more transparent for many years.

More: Oklahoma's special legislative session fizzles out in disappointment. What's next?

“I expect it, but that’s not what’s happening,” Treat said. “We were working on this well before the governor’s special session call. I started working on this in May, but honestly, I’ve been working on this for three years.”

Treat’s push for more openness also echoes calls from the Oklahoma Policy Institute, a left-leaning Tulsa think tank. Last year, the organization said Oklahoma’s government was one of the least transparent in the nation.

“In contrast to other states, the general public is largely left out of the budget process and deprived of basic expectations of government such as public debate. Unfortunately, that didn’t change this year,” wrote Sabine Brown, an analyst for the organization.

“Business as usual — including inadequate time for budget reviews, no process for public feedback, and circumventing legislative rules — means state government cannot truly represent the values and needs of our state. Oklahomans need timely, accurate information from their government and a means through which to meaningfully participate in the budget process. Legislators should increase transparency to ensure the state government is working for the people it is designed to serve," Brown wrote.

Treat said his goal is simple: make the budget better. “If we get the budget process right, a lot of things take care of themselves,” he said.

Treat said part of his reasoning behind the push for transparency was the frustration he experienced as a new lawmaker. “The first year I was here, David Meyers was our appropriations chair. I was a freshman, so I didn’t know any better. Literally on the last day of session he came in and said, ‘This is the budget. Up or down vote.’ We didn’t get to look at it.”

Since then, Treat said the Senate has, for years, been tweaking the budget process around the edges. That changes in the next session, he said. In 2024, the Senate's budget writing process will be dramatically different from the past.

“I’m taking this very seriously,” Treat said. "This isn't a public relations campaign. My aim is to improve the process."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: How Oklahoma Senate leaders hope to end state budget secrecy