640 Promoters: Amendment Limits Tax Increases, Not Tax Cuts

Two individuals heavily involved in promotion and passage of State Question 640, a tax limitation measure approved by Oklahoma voters in 1992, say the provision does not restrain efforts to reduce taxes.

SQ 640 amended the Oklahoma Constitution, requiring that all proposals increasing state taxes must either be sent to a vote of the people or receive three-fourths approval in both houses of the state Legislature. Such measures also cannot be approved in the final five days of the legislative session.

Lloyd Noble II and Gary Gardenhire were board members of Oklahomans for State Question 640, a committee organized to promote the amendment ahead of its appearance on the ballot.

Thursday’s comments by the two came in response to a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Senate Bill 1246, an income tax reduction passed by the Legislature earlier this year.

The filers of the suit claim that since the bill pertained to state tax collections, it needed to meet SQ 640’s requirements, which it didn’t. SQ 640 applies to any bill “intended to raise revenue,” according to the amendment’s wording.

Last month, the Oklahoma Supreme Court heard arguments on the suit. Lines of questioning by justices indicated they could potentially throw out the tax cut. This would also jeopardize other tax-relief provisions enacted since 1992.

Gardenhire, of Norman, said this would apply intent to SQ 640 that simply wasn’t there when the amendment originally passed.

“When we pushed State Question 640 in 1992, we were trying to make it more difficult for the Legislature to increase taxes and revenues in the midnight hour, as they had often done prior to that,” said Gardenhire, an attorney and former state senator.

“Our intent was not to circumscribe the Legislature in reducing taxes. To ‘raise’ revenue meant to increase tax rates. We wanted lawmakers to be more accountable to taxpayers. Our clear intent, when you look back at public comments leading up to the vote, was to make it difficult to increase taxes.

“Some dictionaries say the meaning of the word ‘raise’ is to collect. But it has always been the understanding that, with State Question 640, ‘raise’ meant increase. Court rulings since 1992 have reinforced this.

“When you ‘raise the bar,’ you’re not collecting the bar, you’re making it higher. That’s what we were attempting to do – raise the threshold, make it higher, for increasing taxes on citizens.”

Noble, a Tulsa businessman, expressed concern that a ruling against SB 1246 would affect more than just that piece of legislation.

“Oklahoma lawmakers have passed many different tax reductions since State Question 640 was implemented. They never considered that tax reductions had to meet the provisions of State Question 640 because everyone knew that wasn’t the case.

“A ruling in favor of this lawsuit could end up rolling back every bit of tax relief passed in Oklahoma the last two decades. This would be devastating to families, retirees, veterans and small business owners across this state, all because the Court would have read an intent into the law that was never there.

“It’s been 22 years since this passed a vote of the people. Many Oklahomans living and working today were not of working age and paying taxes back in 1992. They probably aren’t aware of the last-minute hijinks that went on at the Capitol to squeeze in tax increases. It was business as usual. We wanted to change that, and we were largely successful.”

Some of the tax relief measures passed in Oklahoma since 1992 that would be at risk, should the Court overturn SB 1246, include: reductions in the state’s individual income tax rate, repeal of the estate tax, increases in the standard deduction, reduction of the state’s gross production tax rate for oil and natural gas wells, tax exemptions for in-state manufacturers, and specific tax relief for retiree


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  1. Vernon Woods, 21 November, 2014

    Does 640 affect ‘taxes’ or ‘revenues’, or both – the article mentions and implies both?
    If the term ‘revenue’ is key, then how do we account for the innumerable increase in fees for all activities.
    It seems to me that a ‘fee’ must be defined as ‘revenue’.

    And the government will have hell to pay when times get bad again (which always happens), and tax/revenue rates will be required to be increased.

  2. castor, 23 November, 2014

    To hold that SQ 640 prohibits decreases as well as increases, the court would have to assume that the legislature intended to lock in the then-existing rates, which is not at all a reasonable assumption.

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