Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays caught up with the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association’s Executive Vice President, Michael Kelsey, to get a legislative update about what is being done in the Oklahoma State Capitol.
The Oklahoma House and Senate deadline week has just ended, and the two legislative branches must have their bills in the hands of the other. Kelsey said that the legislative session is at about the halfway point. He noted that the House passed an abundance of bills compared to that of the Senate, making for an interesting progression through the remainder of the legislative session.
“Traditionally, the House and the Senate start squaring off over the budget a little later in the sessions, but so far, they have been communicating and doing very well together,” Kelsey observed hopefully.
Concerning the budget, funding for OSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine is a top priority for OCA. Also on their list is landowner property rights related to green energy. Kelsey noted a setback bill regarding wind energy has been advanced. They are also watching legislation related to fertilizer specific to city sewage, which advanced a moratorium to spread it from the Senate this week.
“The Commissioners of Land Office, the school land commission was the subject of a few bills that are really positive,” Kelsey pointed out. “One of them, in particular, passed from the Senate and is going over the House, now helps in the process when a lease transfers, specifically in a case when someone who has been a leaseholder has done something of a value-added strategy that they own.”
He explained that when a lease holder makes an improvement to leased land, such as building a fence, the lease hold owns the fence, not the CLO, and continues to own the fence even if the lease transfers. The bill aims to bridge the gap between the new lease owner and trying to recognize the value of the fence relative to the land instead of pulling the fence up due to a lack of agreement of the amount of added value, the person who owns the fence will have an option to reach an agreement with the new lease holder to keep the fence in place.
He mentioned two labeling bills and one bill to ban the sale of lab-grown meat in the State of Oklahoma. “NCBA is pushing the labeling bills only because they don’t want to government to say what can and cannot be produced and sold,” Kelsey said. “I trust this legislature, but I don’t know what this legislature is going to look like twenty or thirty years from now, and if we start banning food types, then we are creating a really slippery slope and can get into some trouble.”
He clarified that while the FDA has approved lab-grown meat products, there isn’t currently any available to purchase in Oklahoma. Currently, the prices of lab-grown protein products is so high, it won’t be a reasonable option for most consumers anyway.
“Let’s just make sure they label it so the consumer knows what they are getting because if you start banning things, you give the government the authority to say what we can and cannot have in our grocery stores, and that is pretty dangerous,” he emphasized.
Early in the session, OCA prioritized advocating not cutting income taxes on the grounds that it would be made up for by increasing property taxes and more; however, Kelsey said that conversation has begun to die down as no one is able to predict the health of the economy in the immediate future.
Kelsey described conversations he has heard between legislators off-record by saying, “In light of some of the federal policies – tariffs, cutting expenses on the federal level, and all of those types of things – maybe we should just see where we are at, and that is some of the discussion. We appreciate that because we agree.”
Kelsey noted how shocked he was this session at the lack of bills regarding water that he saw as last year, water was a hot topic. “Based upon last year, I was anticipating that we would see a plethora of water bills,” Kelsey said. “A half dozen or so were filed, and I think only one has made it to this point, and it doesn’t have a lot of steam. We may not have a big water discussion bill-wise as we move through this session. Now, that doesn’t mean we won’t talk about the issue and queue it up for next year, but it just has not elevated itself as a major issue.”
Kelsey reported that things could get interesting during the second half of 2025 due to an unknown dynamic: “When bills cross the proverbial rotunda, then different dynamics start to play because now the author of the bill is not the original author. This senator, in the case of a House bill, is carrying a bill that somebody else wrote – a House author is carrying a Senate bill that somebody else wrote. That just gives it a different dynamic, so sometimes those bills can be stalled a little bit, and sometimes, they can gain a new life. Other times, they are traded off for other things.”
He rests assured that it is a normal part of the internal checks and balances system that has to be worked through. He believes that there are fewer bills this session than in previous sessions.
About the new Oversight Committee Process in the House, he said it can be looked at in one of two ways: either as another hurdle for a bill to pass or another opportunity to kill the bill, depending on the legislator’s feelings about it.
“Personally, I have appreciated the two-part Oversight Committee Process,” Kelsey stated. “It has given us an opportunity on a couple of bills that we have been working on to tweak and approve them because of some things that came up that we weren’t aware of.”
He anticipates the DOGE factor to come into play during the appropriations and budgeting process as Governor Kevin Stitt has made clear that he wants fewer employees at the end of his term than at the beginning.
“We also have the fact that inflation has driven up the cost of everything, and that includes the services that the government provides,” Kelsey pointed out. “It is going to be a challenge to reduce the level of spending overall because of inflation – that doesn’t mean government has necessarily grown, it just means that things have gotten more expensive, and we all know that.”
The 60th Legislative session in Oklahoma must be concluded by the end of the day on May 30, 2025. the Sine Die Adjournment must occur by 5:00 p.m- although it could happen earlier if the two bodies can finish their budget work earlier.
