Senate Finance Committee Passes Legislation to Encourage Aerospace Industry Growth in Oklahoma

The Senate Finance Committee approved legislation Tuesday that will help to secure quality, high paying aerospace jobs in Oklahoma. Senate Bill 3, authored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Mazzei, R-Tulsa, passed unanimously.

“This legislation encourages private sector job growth in one of our best industries,” said Sen. Mike Mazzei. “I applaud all members of the Senate Finance Committee for being a part of this common sense legislation that has helped to create and retain good jobs in Oklahoma.”

SB 3 will remove the Aerospace Engineer Workforce and Recruitment incentives from the list of credits on moratorium. The aerospace incentives have been praised for creating hundreds of jobs since being put in place, including the 550 jobs that Boeing announced they would be moving to Oklahoma from California.

Mazzei said the unanimous and bi-partisan support of the bill was encouraging.

“We are in agreement that these policies create good, quality jobs in Oklahoma,” said Mazzei. “This incentive works and is creating jobs so we decided that removing it from the moratorium list was a good idea.”

Monday Governor Fallin stated in the State of the State address that tax incentives should be kept if they were creating jobs and doing what they were designed to do. The credits were fully in place for one year before being put on moratorium. During that time hundreds of new engineers were hired in Oklahoma and many more aerospace jobs were successfully recruited.

SB 3 will now move to the full Senate for consideration.