Don’t you wish all of your work days could end in seven minutes? I sure do, but perhaps it’s not the best look for members of the Oklahoma Legislature, whose job it is to get things done for the people of this state.
When Senate President Pro Tempore quickly gaveled the upper chamber in and out Wednesday, he declared he did not “see a quorum” of the 25 senators needed to convene for action. After more than 30 senators were confirmed to be in the building that morning, Paxton held a press conference to declare “nothing crazy’s going on” despite some of his colleagues decrying the “shenanigans.”
“Most constituents are glad when we get out of the building and quit passing laws,” he said. “We’ve got our work done. There’s no need to stay here.”
House members, on the other hand, heard bills well into Wednesday night and early Thursday, stopping occasionally to poke fun at their Senate colleagues and chide them for allegedly breaking an agreement Paxton’s leadership team had made Monday. Several important bills, they said, were being denied hearings in the Senate.
“We made a commitment to uphold the people’s work, and we upheld our commitment,” House Majority Floor Leader Josh West (R-Grove) said just after 11 p.m. Wednesday.
The House grousing spurred Paxton to call another press conference at 9 a.m. Friday — the sort of thing you do when there is no controversy. Paxton said he had counted up all the minutes each chamber had been in session since spring break and found they were virtually identical. In terms of the clock, Paxton argued, the Senate had worked “smarter, harder and longer.”
“Almost every bill that was brought up on the House floor the last couple of days were brought up with some derogatory statement about the old people in the Senate not being able to work and finish up the week,” Paxton said. “That was more wasted time. And so the time they spent working on bills was also spent time with that kind of nonsense.”
Irritated by Paxton’s presser, House Speaker Kyle Hilbert fired off an email to his members outlining times he claimed Paxton and his team have not honored agreements this session.
“During [Paxton’s] press conference there were several petty underhanded insults being hurled at me personally as well as the House as a whole,” Hilbert wrote. “I have no plans to get into a tit-for-tat press conference over this.”
With drama so often defining May days at the Legislature, imagine the sort of shenanigans that working through lunch might have held.
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