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By OICA CEO Joe Dorman
The Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy (OICA) is excited to announce that we have posted our 2018 Child Well-being Legislative Report Card to our website at OICA.org. The Report Card tracks how Governor Mary Fallin and every Oklahoma state senator and representative performed on behalf of our state’s children.
Our report is designed to emphasize policy issues related to child well-being that often go underreported or ignored. We selected 20 different ideas approved by our board and monitored by OICA, including several criminal justice reform measures and bills that were introduced at the request of OICA or other youth programs across the state. We did not include bills which did not have votes in both bodies. We also did not include bills we considered to be negative, as we wanted this report card to show positive work done by lawmakers for our children. In addition, we did not grade the many bills dealing with the budget and revenue-raising measures.
Click here to view the Report Card and here to view the list of bills we tracked and used to calculate grades.
I am pleased to report that 91 of the 149 lawmakers had a 100% score. In addition, 36 more lawmakers were supportive of at least 18 of the 20 bills we graded.
We chose not to deduct points from legislators who had excused absences, as sometimes legislative obligations require missing votes. Sen. Joe Newhouse, for example, was unable to vote on any of the OICA measures as he is serving overseas in the Navy Reserve. We are very thankful for the men and women who serve in our armed forces and completely understand when votes must be missed due to those or other pressing obligations.
OICA does thank those legislators who supported every bill and had perfect attendance on all twenty measures. Those lawmakers in the State House are Reps. Meloyde Blancett, Donnie Condit, Scott Inman, JP Jordan, Dell Kerbs, Ben Loring, Cyndi Munson, Earl Sears, Steve Vaughan, Collin Walke, Tammy West, and George Young.
Senators on our 100% list are Sens. Mark Allen, Tom Dugger, Kay Floyd, AJ Griffin, Allison Ikley-Freeman, Darcy Jech, Greg McCortney, Lonnie Paxton, Dewayne Pemberton, Marty Quinn, Paul Scott, Ron Sharp, Frank Simpson, and Gary Stanislawski.
In addition, OICA would like to thank the authors of the bills who put forth these ideas for the children of our state. Those authors in the House are Reps. Rhonda Baker, Carol Bush, Dale Derby, Kyle Hilbert, Chris Kannady, Dell Kerbs, Mark Lawson, Ben Loring, Jadine Nollan, Terry O’Donnell, Pat Ownbey, Tammy West and Josh West. In the Senate, authors of bills on the report card are Sens. Stephanie Bice, Kay Floyd, AJ Griffin, James Leewright, Adam Pugh, Ron Sharp, Jason Smalley, Greg Treat and Ervin Yen.
We also wish to thank Governor Mary Fallin for signing into law 19 out of the 20 bills, with the only exception being legislation vetoed dealing with school bullying. We understand her concerns and hope to address this policy again next session.
Thank you again to those lawmakers who voted to support the children of our state, and please do not forget to vote in the upcoming Primary Elections on June 26!
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