The Oklahoma Legislature has introduced a Budget Bill for State Agencies
Let's see what's in it...
After a new type of budgeting process this session in the interest of being more transparent, SR 31 has been introduced to budget state agencies.
“The new budget transparency process has gone better than anticipated and marks a significant step toward enhancing accountability and public trust in the Senate’s fiscal decision-making process,” Pro Tem Treat said. “All 33 meetings were open, livestreamed and have established a framework that promotes accessibility and a proactive approach to budgeting that will bring further accountability to government. I appreciate the diligent work and all the hours Senators put into this process, especially the staff who were essential to this process. I hope this will be built upon in the future and will continue to promote engagement and responsibility.”
The resolution will be up for a floor vote on Monday, March 18 during the Senate’s afternoon session that begins at 1:30 p.m.
It’s 6 pages, but I’m just going to put out some line items here and link a few things and drop some notes.
As referenced by the budget timeline, these numbers may not stay firm this is just what has been introduced.
Any agency that deals with cannabis in ANY way, be it from regulatory to enforcement, down to inter-agency collaboration, to MOUs, to putting out a educational pdf to your family, including these agencies and if it was in this bill I tried to include it here:
Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority................ $41,900,000
Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry........... $54,624,545
Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth............ $3,008,819
Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services........ $388,430,578
Oklahoma Water Resources Board..................... $201,570,888
Department of Environmental Quality................. $38,115,165
Office of the Attorney General...................... $45,684,780
Oklahoma Tax Commission............................. $85,174,417
Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.............. $68,129,978
Oklahoma State Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control.....$3,145,330
Some notes on agencies that work with OMMA that are not in the bill
The Oklahoma Banking Dept, which is one of OMMA’s listed agencies on their website, is not appropriated but funded from fees. The Oklahoma Liquified Petroleum Gas Administration collects fees and funding to a “Liquid Petroleum Gas Fund” and a board does their budgeting— sort of like what OMMA used to do (or would have done) had OKLEG not passed a bill to make them a fully appropriated agency.
There seems to be a pattern of politicians who are unfamiliar with cannabis clutching the tax revenues generated by the industry, making them harder for even OMMA to access for staff to do their jobs well or develop the industry for stakeholders, or make it the best it can be for patients.
The Oklahoma Rural Water Association is… well… they have(had?) a PAC that last year agreed to shut down over ethics violations so I probably better not speculate on the money there, and the OWRB- the major state entity over everything- is on the list. But that’s something worth knowing when one looks at bills and certain legislators that target the cannabis industry related to water issues in rural areas, while disregarding or favoring say, PFOs (large-scale chicken farms).
Concerning OBNDD and OMMA
At first glance, OBN’s funding looks rather low doesn’t it? Just a little 3 million…
OBNDD gets a substantial revenue bump from permit renewals/fees, by their own admission to The Frontier when the Legislature advanced the bill to raise OBN registration renewal fees 400%, in addition making several other changes.
That said, when the medical cannabis businesses are not able to renew because the process has become too difficult for them, OBN does not see that revenue. And OBN goes to the Legislature every year with their hand out and to the media to court public opinion on the job they are doing. They also hold some interesting press events, then we get racially charged introduced policy the following session that merely distracts and divides further. OMMA is present at some of these, but they tend to not get questions about the work they do on testing or compliance oversight, and as a patient this has always been a concern why this is less of a priority to media to even address when they are in the room, over continued criminalization talking points.
Speaking of press events— I was on their email list, OBN has a pesky housekeeping issue of not using CC, BCC or the Govdelivery system through Granicus that nearly every Oklahoma state agency contracts (hmm…does that cost anything?)- they just slapped every email address in the “to” field and hit send. I attached a redacted screen capture below before I got tired of redacting but there are hundreds of addresses here and some of them are not attached to media outlet domains. I will unpack more of OBN’s public relations in a later post (because there is more to unpack…)
OBN’s Public Information Officer not being able to hit a button on an email list aside, law enforcement is funded in many ways and the AG’s office as listed on the budget is a large item not including another supplemental entry and other requests. There are also additional proposals still in the legislative process that would give even more power and money to the Attorney General office if they pass into law.
OMMA’s budget is relatively close to what they received last year, when they also requested a supplemental package for the Quality Assurance Lab, and in their regular budget proposal are seeking to hire more staff to process applications.
They are working on the QA lab with ODAFF (also budgeted in the line items above), and NonDoc included more info on supplemental appropriations in their piece on the budget resolution.
Wallace said one concern about the lack of meetings between himself and Thompson so far relates to agency requests for supplemental appropriations. At least 10 agencies have requested at least $40 million of additional funding to support their budgets for Fiscal Year 2024, which concludes June 30.
One fast and easy reference to the budget offering this year for OMMA (in general) in SR31 is to simply compare it to OMMA’s previous budget on their website from last year - $37 million, this covers salaries of staff, contracts and expenses and supplies and… well, you can see it on the list.
This can be a guide to see what OMMA would be doing with that money, if they are able to hire any more staff with it, and what limitations they would have if it’s not enough. The important thing to note is this money is what is generated from the medical cannabis excise taxes already, it’s not coming from any other taxes, but it sits in a fund, on hold, until the Legislature allows OMMA to access it. This was not the case in previous years when OMMA was able to fund themselves from the excise taxes.
So when one asks about where their excise tax money is going when they make a dispensary purchase… it’s often going nowhere until politicians—some of whom have no idea how the industry works, or a misinformed idea of it— have their say.