Rep. Jim Grego
By Rep. Jim Grego
With Labor Day behind us, summer is unofficially over. This also starts the beginning of the next legislative session. We don’t convene until the first Monday in February, but now is when a lot of the “leg work” is done for upcoming legislation in the form of interim studies. There are a total of 152 interim studies being conducted by the House of Representatives. All of these studies are available online on the House website at https://former.okhouse.gov/Committees/ShowInterimStudies.aspx. These studies are not only informative but some are very interesting as well.
The on-again-off-again patrolling of our rural counties seems to be off again due to the attorney general ruling the Oklahoma Highway Patrol cannot decrease its presence in our most populated metro areas. I applauded OHP when they earlier announced that they would begin to shift resources from our large metro areas to the rural parts of the state. The attorney general states this ruling is unlawful, and his office won’t allow it. My hope is that this decision is based on law and not political whims.
Reports of the Oklahoma Broadband Office returning $225 million to the Federal Government is raising a lot of concern in my area. The Broadband Office claims this is due to reductions in cost. I don’t understand why these dollars couldn’t be shifted to parts of Oklahoma that still do not have any type of affordable internet service, such as my residence. When the broadband plan was rolled out, we were promised internet connections in 95% of all Oklahoma. I assumed the remaining 5% would only be our less populated parts of the state. So far, this is not true as much of our heavily populated Eastern Oklahoma cannot yet get affordable internet. Very disappointing.
As always, thank You for allowing me to serve you. I can be reached at (405) 557-7381 or by email at jim.grego@okhouse.gov.
Jim Grego serves District 17 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. His district includes Latimer County and part and Pittsburg County.
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