Press Releases

President Kennedy said, “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

As we fought for health insurance coverage of children with autism last session, we fought a “persistent, persuasive and unrealistic” myth. The constant refrain from those who oppose helping these families is that insurance mandates like “Nick’s Law” raise premiums and increase the number of people who are uninsured.

Lt. Gov. Jari Askins and Tom Price, Chesapeake Energy’s senior vice-president for investor and government relations, will be the keynote speakers at the inaugural Green Country Alternative Expo to be held Oct. 2-4 at the Muskogee County Fairgrounds, which is bringing together experts from all across the state to discuss alternative fuel, energy research and options.

Members of the Oklahoma State Senate are scheduling visits to local schools in their districts. It’s part of “America’s Legislators Back to School,” a program sponsored by the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) aimed at helping children and teens learn more about government and representative democracy.
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State Senator Earl Garrison, D-Muskogee, is hosting the inaugural Green Country Alternative Energy Expo at the Muskogee County Fairgrounds Oct. 2-4 bringing together experts from all across the state to discuss alternative fuel, energy research and options.

State Senator Don Barrington, the author of Oklahoma’s back-to-school sales tax holiday, said an increase in sales tax revenues for the month of August show that the tax holiday was a huge success for the second year in a row.

Barrington, R-Lawton, praised the sales tax holiday for providing savings to Oklahoma families, and for giving a boost to Oklahoma’s economy that helped increase overall sales tax revenues.

State Sen. Kathleen Wilcoxson announced Wednesday that she has retired from her seat in the upper chamber and is returning to her first callingeducation. Wilcoxson has accepted a position as a Title I elementary teacher in the Western Heights School District located in southwest Oklahoma City.

Hello again, everybody! Few have been as critical as I have of decisions made by House Speaker Chris Benge. He got that criticism the old-fashioned way: he earned it.

His decision to deny even a vote to the autism insurance bill will go down as one of the most ill-advised and unfortunate decisions ever made by any Speaker of the House. That decision hurt families struggling to care for autistic children.