Davenport: Oklahoma Doesn’t Need “Government Reforms,” It Needs a New Constitution

By Professor James Davenport

The now-rejected Step Up Oklahoma plan provided recommendations on increasing state revenues and several changes to Oklahoma government. While the tax proposals were fast-tracked through the state House of Representatives and ultimately rejected, the government reform proposals were, interestingly, not fast-tracked and await action.

The reforms proposed by the Step Up plan included lowering the supermajority threshold for passing tax increases from the current 75% of the legislature to 60%; the creation of an “independent” budget office; increasing term limits from the current 12-year limit to 16 years; and running the Governor and Lieutenant Governor as a ticket, among other suggestions.

That some of these ideas may have merit can certainly be debated. However, these proposals are only tinkering around the edges of the problem. The fundamental problem our state government has is its out-dated constitution.

Our state constitution is one of the longest in the country. As noted by professors Brett Sharp and Chris Markwood in Oklahoma Government & Politics, the U.S. Constitution contains only 8,700 words and the average state constitution contains about 38,000 words. By contrast, the Oklahoma constitution contains over 74,000 words.

The Oklahoma constitution, passed at the height of progressive populism, removes many budgetary and other important decisions out of the hands of the legislature. It also makes it difficult for the governor to create a unified policy direction in the executive branch. As Sharp and Markwood note, “The state’s framers were largely distrustful of legislatures and were developing this constitution during a period of time in which prevailing political, social, and economic ideas were being challenged…the framers sought to place as much power as possible outside the legislative arm of state government.”

Current events may make some consider removing power from the legislature as a wise decision. However, it is precisely this lack of power that contributes to the problems facing our state. The inability of the legislature to directly manage certain state government affairs prevents it from effectively addressing important issues.

Additionally, the executive branch is prevented from having a unified approach to governance by the fact that six other major executive branch officials (not including the members of the Corporation Commission) are elected separately and independently of the governor. While I encounter students (and others) every day who lay blame for a variety of the state’s problems at the governor’s feet. The reality is the governor of Oklahoma has very little ability to truly impact state policy in some of the more important areas of governance.

Finally, the creation of a constitution is the ultimate expression of self-government. One interesting feature of the Oklahoma constitution is that it requires that a state question be placed on the ballot every twenty years offering the people the opportunity to recreate their state government. However, as Sharp and Markwood point out, it’s been 1970 since this actually occurred.

Oklahoma has some serious structural problems with its state government. These issues can’t be effectively addressed by “reforming” the edges. The state legislature owes the people of our great state the opportunity to practice real self-government. We owe it to ourselves to take advantage of that opportunity.

James Davenport is a professor of political science at Rose State College.


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  1. castor, 19 February, 2018

    I greatly favor rewriting Oklahoma’s Constitution.

  2. apetty, 23 February, 2018

    I think that we would be a lot better off with less state legislatures, by at least half, and we could use more local level representation in our city and county governments.

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