Rep. Boles Legislative Update

Thursday, March 14 was our last day to pass bills that the House of Representatives filed through the House Floor. Representatives filed 1,210 bills this year, but only 495 made it through committees before our deadline. Of those remaining bills, we ultimately sent 422 to the Senate.

I had five of my bills pass through the House floor this session. I covered two of them in my previous column, so I want to briefly explain the remaining three bills.

House Bill 3051 would allow for the reallocation of funds between three energy tax credit pools if any of the pools are not fully utilized. The three tax credit pools included are already in current statute and have a $10 million annual cap.

If the full $10 million is not used for one of the above tax credit categories in a given year, the remainder will be reallocated evenly to the other categories. If two categories don't use their full amount, the remainder will be combined and reallocated to the third category based on this bill passage.

The measure, which is not expected to impact state revenue or state appropriations since we already appropriate the full $30 million each year, passed the House 87-3.

I also ran and passed House Bill 3534, which was requested by the Oil & Gas Division of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. HB3534 sunsets Category A financial statements as a method of surety that can be used for any new operator posting surety. This bill also staggers Category B surety based on the number of wells the operator owns.

We worked with industry groups on this language. There is a backlog of over 18,000 wells within our "state" well-plugging program. The average well costs between $20,000 and $25,000 to plug, which means Oklahoma has a huge accrued liability.

We need to get more aggressive with our surety bond requirements for operators in order to ensure that the state gets more revenue to help plug the wells if we have to take over them over from operators no longer are in business. The oil and gas industry knows that we must do something different regarding surety bond policy to help reduce the well-plugging backlog within Oklahoma and was supportive of this bill.

House Bill 3048 better clarifies the original intent of the open transfer statute we passed several years ago. It prohibits the State Board of Education (SBE) from overturning a school district's decision to deny a transfer based on overcapacity as long as the local school district is compliant with the current open transfer statutes. HB3048 passed the House unanimously.

Now that the House has wrapped up hearing House bills, we'll swap bills with the Senate and start hearing their bills that passed the Senate. These bills will be assigned to our House committees before they move to the House floor. We anticipate receiving 279 Senate bills, and we'll soon start the committee process all over again.

It is truly an honor to represent you at the Oklahoma State Capitol. As always, feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns that you may have. My office phone is (405) 557-7405 and my email is brad.boles@okhouse.gov. God bless!

Rep. Brad Boles represents District 51 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, which includes Grady and Stephens Counties.