Opinion

On Tuesday, the governor signed Senate Bill 941 into law. For the past four years, we have been working on this piece of legislation during my tenure as Chairman of the Wildlife Committee.

After our mid-March deadline to pass House bills through the House chamber, we've officially swapped bills with the Senate. This is done through a process called 'engrossing,' and it's the formal steps taken to officially move a bill between chambers.

Judging by Sunday’s severe weather predictions from the Oklahoma TV weather fear mongers, I’d have thought a breadand-toilet-paper-shelf-clearing weather event was coming to our part of the state, complete with papaya-sized hailstones falling out of the sky accompanied by a swarm of F-5 tornadoes flinging around radioactive tigers and a couple sharks.

Taxation without representation is one of the main reasons why the U.S. colonists rose up against Great Britain’s rule, starting the Revolutionary War.

When I was young, dumb, and broke I never considered the importance of hobbies — I didn’t have the patience or resources for them anyway. After several years I am no longer considered young and I have grown a new found appreciation for the little things we do beyond our given responsibilities to keep ourselves from going insane. However, I am still limited on patience and resources and as an added bonus of adulthood I am also limited on time. So, my dilemma and my new adventure is to find a hobby that is reasonably priced (free is also acceptable), not time-sensitive allowing me to dedicate anywhere from 10 minutes to the remainder of my days to, and is not going to cause ANOTHER never-ending mess that reminds me of doing dishes and laundry — the two most dreaded task on my chore wheel.

Our last day to pass bills through their chamber of origin, also known as our third reading deadline, was on March 14, and I passed three more of my bills through the House ahead of this deadline. House Bill 3752 enables the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board in Oklahoma to access vital records from the Department of Corrections (DOC), facilitating a more comprehensive understanding of factors contributing to domestic violence fatalities.

CUSHING - Our Daily Bread Mobile Market, which delivers groceries to Yale, Glencoe, Cushing, Perkins, and the Family Resource Center at Oklahoma State University, recently selected a new director, Morgan Andrews.

One of my guilty pleasures is the Netflix original series “Bridgerton” which is based on a series of books which I also have indulged in. In the book series, nowhere does it specify racial background. Seeing the setting was 1800 England with most main characters being part of high society, I assumed (as I am sure is true with most) the race of the characters to match the ethnic background — meaning to put it bluntly, I thought the characters were caucasian.

This week, we spent long days on the House floor voting on legislation, and I want to highlight a few of the bills that stood out to me. The first one, House Bill 3747, would allow the Oklahoma Veterans Commission to enter into contracts with private nursing facilities to provide services to veterans who reside more than 100 miles from a state veteran's center.

I am an animal lover. I have always been an animal lover, I will always be an animal lover.