Askins hopes to leave House with positive change
Capitol Spotlight for weeklies for week of Feb. 12, 2006
By Jim Campbell
OPA Capitol News Bureau
Jari Askins would have been the first woman to serve as Oklahoma's Speaker of the House of Representatives but for the Republican takeover that now pits her as Democratic leader against the first GOP speaker in more than 80 years.
What's more, the Duncan Democrat and Kellyville Republican Todd Hiett are term-limited legislators running for their party's nomination for lieutenant governor.
The first big issue of the 2006 Legislature, emergency funding for the Department of Corrections and pay raises for agency employees, ended the session's first week in a noisy standoff over a Senate-passed bill and a House GOP alternative. An indication of things to come?
"It doesn't have to be," Askins said in a Feb. 9 interview. "Yesterday should have been a breakthrough day. Yesterday was an opportunity for the House and Senate to come together on an agenda for funding the Department of Corrections and DOC employees.
"House Democrats joined the entire Senate in a bill that offered a decent pay raise that would be annualized and cover all DOC personnel," she said. "The House bill fell short of that. I think when the Senate sent us SB 1264 it was a bipartisan effort, a show of good faith."
Askins' caucus blocked a vote on the House bill by denying the two-thirds majority necessary to bring the bill to the floor without committee action.  A GOP rule change last year gave them the opportunity, she said.
"What was new was that they changed the rule last year so that a bill had to have been on general order so many days before it can be voted on so it can be amended," Askins said.  "If they hadn't changed the rule last year, they would not have had to suspend the rule to vote on it."
She also said if the Senate bill had not existed "there might have been a different outcome. We might have tried to amend the House bill to increase the pay raises from $2,000."
Democrats insisted on $3,200 raises covering all department employees and making the increases permanent.  Hiett said he was skeptical they could do that with the $24 million in the bill, proposing raises of no less than $2,000 and giving corrections officials the chance to grant larger raises where appropriate.
Askins said she is not uncomfortable seeking the same office as Hiett while presenting competing programs in the House.
"Not to me," she said. "My focus is on the Democratic nomination, on July 25." 
She is so far opposed in that election by lobbyist Peter J. Regan.
Hiett, interviewed a week earlier, also said he is focused on running the House until adjournment and not on his primary race including Tulsa Sens. Scott Pruitt and Nancy Riley.

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Like Hiett, Askins said she wants to leave the legislature with positive change in the way it does business, should her bills get a hearing this year.
A big change would come about from her House Joint Resolution 1049, introduced several years ago, which would call a vote on a constitutional change to set up a two-year budgeting cycle. One year lawmakers would deal only with the budget and give in-depth consideration to substantive issues the next.
"It would provide that we can always deal with emergencies," she said. 
The present system, she said, "does not allow time for members of the legislature or of a committee to be as informed as they should be or the public deserves."
Also this year, she sees "an opportunity to meet some needs that we haven't been able to do for five or six years." She cited promises to raise teacher salaries, to improve reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals, to repair dilapidated roads and bridges, to strengthen public safety and improve salaries of corrections workers.
Measures enacted previously to reduce the prison population and improve treatment of inmates, such as last year's record spending for drug court expansion, may take several years to show results, she said.
A bill called STEM - for science, technology, engineering and math - would create internships for teachers of those subjects in K-12 classes and give them tax credits for their more expensive education.
Another bill she authored with Sen. Tom Adelson, D-Tulsa, would expand the health care premium assistance plan passed last year to small businesses with 50 or fewer employees. It is part of Gov. Brad Henry's program. 
Askins said term-limits present a new question for the Ethics Commission that affects her and Hiett - can term-limited legislators transfer funds raised for House or Senate races to another state race?  Candidates leaving the legislature to run for federal office cannot do it, and lawmakers who are not term-limits do not face that restriction, she said.

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