The Senate Appropriations committee has given its approval to language ensuring the right of schools to display the words “E PLURIBUS UNUM” (Out of Many One)” and “IN GOD WE TRUST.”

Senator Charlie Laster is author of House Bill 2477, known as the “Reading Sufficiency Act.” The Shawnee Democrat amended the measure to include language declaring the right to display the mottos.

Saying House Bill 2619 would further disadvantage workers injured on the job and end up costing employers and taxpayers millions of dollars more each year, Senate President Pro Tempore Cal Hobson announced Monday that the bill will not be granted a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
The announcement effectively kills the measure, which is authored in the Senate by Senator Scott Pruitt, R-Broken Arrow.

The chance for meaningful reforms to Oklahoma’s expensive, pro-lawyer workers compensation system has been killed for the legislative session by Senate President Pro Tempore Cal Hobson, D-Lexington, who has chosen to obstruct reforms by not allowing a committee hearing on a landmark workers comp reform bill that sailed through the House of Representatives on a vote of 95 to 1.

The Oklahoma City Community College Board of Regents will dedicate the Keith Leftwich Memorial Library on Thursday, March 25, at 1:30 p.m. at the College's Library Plaza.

"Senator Leftwich sponsored legislation throughout the years that enabled Oklahoma City Community College to grow in service to its community," said Oklahoma City Community College Board Chair Darrel Lanier.

The Democrat leadership of the Oklahoma State Senate is refusing to allow a committee chairman to hear a landmark workers compensation reform bill, Senate Republican leaders said at a State Capitol news conference.

House Bill 2619 was assigned by the Senate’s Democrat leadership to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but they will not allow Judiciary Chairman Jerry Smith, R-Tulsa, to hear the legislation in his committee.

“The issue is a complicated one and Oklahoma has made more progress on addressing the costs associated with our system than almost any state in the nation in the last decade. I don’t think I need to remind Senator Pruitt that for a number of years he championed a completely different style of reform. He told us his administrative courts plan like those adopted in Texas and Florida – if we would just take his word for it and enact it – would solve all our ills. We chose instead to move cautiously in the area of reform and have made great strides."

Recent findings by a U.S. District Judge show both the good and the bad of the state’s Medicaid program and now it is time for the state legislature to respond, the Chairman of the Appropriations Sub-Committee on Health and Social Services said Thursday.

Senator Cal Hobson, a long-time champion of education, has been appointed the Senate Education Committee and the Appropriations Sub-Committee on Education, Senate President Pro Tempore Mike Morgan announced Thursday.

“Education must truly be our first priority as a state. Investing in our school children and our college students is a very real investment in the future of Oklahoma,” Hobson said

Hobson, D-Lexington, has also been assigned to the Judiciary, Energy and Retirement and Group Health Committees.

A bill that would allow teachers and school administrators to post the National Motto, “In God We Trust,” in Oklahoma public schools is in trouble, the bill’s author and two members of the Senate Education Committee said at a press conference on Monday.

One day after Governor Brad Henry signed the Fiscal Year 2005 General Appropriations bill into law, Senate President Pro Tempore Cal Hobson and House Speaker Larry Adair officially appointed House and Senate members to the committee which will work out the remaining details of the FY 2005 budget.