Use these tools to decipher the Oklahoma Legislature

Photo by David Goehring.
Photo by David Goehring.

Next week, the Oklahoma Legislature comes back into session. Legislators will debate bills and make decisions that affect all Oklahomans, but the process can be hard to follow for the average citizen. That’s why we’ve created a number of tools to help you decipher what happens at the state Capitol.

The first is our newly updated, always popular Oklahoma Legislative Primer. Whether you are a veteran legislator, a complete novice to Oklahoma politics, or anyone in between, the 2015 Legislative Primer will provide you invaluable information in a concise, easy-to-read format. Topics covered in the Primer include the composition of the Legislature and executive branch, the Legislative calender, how a bill becomes a law, the state budget process, and more. We welcome you to download, print, and distribute the Legislative Primer to anyone who may need it to figure out what’s happening at the Capitol.

The second new informational tool we’ve created is “What’s That?”, an online glossary of terms related to Oklahoma politics and government. You may have noticed dashed lines appearing under certain words on our blog recently. Each of those is a link to a “What’s That?” definition of terms such as “striking title”, “Board of Equalization”, and “dual-eligible”. You can browse all 35 terms here, and we will keep adding new terms over time.

These are just the latest of many resources freely available on okpolicy.org for finding reliable information about Oklahoma — alongside our state and county data tools, our “In The Know” daily news briefing, our weekly podcast, our Oklahoma legislation tracker, and more!

If you want to help us keeping producing these resources to ensure a better informed public debate, now is a great time to donate.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gene Perry worked for OK Policy from 2011 to 2019. He is a native Oklahoman and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a B.A. in history and an M.A. in journalism.

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