Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to serve as your Oklahoma House State Representative. I appreciate all of your emails and phone calls. Please continue to share with me your concerns, questions, and suggestions for how I may better serve you. I also encourage you to follow my personal blog, http://thewestreport.com and my facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/TammyWestHouse84.
The legislative session is entering its second month. March 1 was the deadline for all House bills to be passed out of standing committees, so we’ve had many busy days of hearing numerous bills. Once a bill passes committee it is eligible to be heard on the House floor. If it passes the House it goes to the Senate. The process works the same way for the Senate. In a few weeks, House committees will meet again to hear Senate bills.
In the meantime, the governor has signed the final Fiscal Year 2018 budget. As many of you know, this budget proved an enormous challenge. We ended with by being able to appropriate more than 99 percent of funding to all state agencies. Now we can put our focus toward the budget for Fiscal Year 2019, which starts in July. The good news is our revenue picture this year is vastly improved from this same time a year ago. Collections to the state treasurer have been up 12 of the past 13 months in year-over-year comparisons. Hiring is up; most sectors of the economy are doing well. We still have hope that we can fund a teacher pay raise this year.
God bless,
Representative Tammy West
