Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Oklahoma High Court Say NO MORE "LOG ROLLING" !

Log Rolling: 2 or more issues "roll"
into a single proposal when those issues
do nothing but insert politics into what,
thus far, has been a clean process.


State's high court warns
on appropriations

By John Greiner
Capitol Bureau
Tue January 22, 2008


Oklahoma legislators and their successors were put on notice by the state Supreme Court today to never again violate the Oklahoma Constitution as they did in appropriating $140 million last session for projects ranging from the Centennial Commission to higher education.

The ruling is a hollow victory for Oklahoma City attorney Jerry Fent, who filed the case, because the court didn't block the money from being used.

Fent called it "log rolling" -- which is lumping favorable items and unfavorable ones in a single bill in an effort to get legislators to vote for it. Fent said the funding bill he questioned lumped several separate projects into one measure; he contends that each project should have been taken up in separate bills.

The court said it will not hesitate in the future to issue an order blocking this kind of legislation that violates the constitutional prohibition against putting more than one appropriation in a bill.

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