A Look Back for Lawmakers... (Part 1)

A Look Back for Lawmakers...

Friday, December 28, 2007; Posted 6:11 p.m. (CDT)



Laws are supposed to guide and protect us, but then we come across laws making the watermelon the official vegetable and wonder how next year's session can possibly beat this year's.

It's been a good year for some, like the anti-immigration bill author Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore.

"[House Bill] 1804 has been a tremendous success," says Terrill.

It's been a less than ideal year for others like Rep. Al Lindley, D-Oklahoma City.

"The personal things I filed never made it to the House floor," says Lindley.

Some even managed to have a little fun, like Rep. Joe Dorman, D-Rush Springs, who authored the bill making watermelon the official state vegetable.

"I swear it is a vegetable," says Dorman.

Like every year, legislators were busy writing, re-writing and arguing. One of the biggest noisemakers of the year for Oklahoma has to be the anti-immigration bill. That bill made it a crime to harbor or employ illegal immigrants and gave law enforcement the ability to detain them until they are deported.

"It's not going to succeed where Mr. Terrill and his people say it will," says Lindley.

"Two to one margin Oklahomans not only support House Bill 1804, but they also by a two to one margin support strengthening the bill, " says Terrill.

Other big laws that affected the state in a less controversial way were the sex-offender laws. That includes Jessica's law, which increased the penalty for sex offenses against children under the age of 12 to at least 25 years in prison. Another one put up a three-tier system to rate sex offenders.

These are only a few of the hundreds of laws put into place this year, and legislators have a lot more planned.

"Our roads still aren't in very good shape. If there's any doubt about that, just drive across the border from Oklahoma to Texas, and it'll be glaringly apparent," says Terrill.

They hope the second year into the centennial is as great as the first.

"The one thing I'm worried about it being an election year is we always see a lot of politics played where people try to one up each other," says Dorman.

"Been a lot of good things in 2007, and hopefully, a lot of good things in 2008," says Terrill.

Rep. Dorman says the watermelon bill helped bring a lot of tourism and promotion to the state's watermelon festival, so it's worth being known as the watermelon guy. He's now working on legislation for this session that will select the state's official rock-and-roll song.

Rep. Dorman isn't just working on that bill, though. He's working on legislation that will give better training to firefighters to keep them safe. He's also working on another bill to help grandparents who are taking care of their grandchildren.