The basics from Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers:
The budget: Nothing is off the table. You want to hit education last, but teachers have had fewer furlough days compared to many other employees. Some programs have been cut so much that "if you hit them again, you might as well close them." Oklahoma allows voluntary furloughs and early retirements, and that's something we should look at.
Water: Like the budget, nothing is off the table, including inter-basin transfers. But anything that costs that much money "is less likely." Funding, and helping local governments move quickly on, new reservoirs and reservoir expansions is what we've "really got to focus on."
Transportation: Thinks a regional T-SPLOST will pass both the House and Senate this session. It may or may not take a constitutional amendment (and thus a statewide referendum) to allow local votes to authorize the regional sales taxes.
How the culture in the Senate compares to the culture in the House: It's difficult for me to compare the two. But "the people I work with in both the House and the Senate, to my knowledge, do things the right way. ... And that goes for Democrats as well as Republicans."
Sales tax collection reform: Privatizing sales tax collections, and allowing local governments to audit businesses instead of the state, is problematic because retailers with locations in numerous counties would have to file paperwork in all of those counties. We're working on a clearing house, where local governments would partner and retailers could submit one set of paperwork to satisfy all these jurisdictions.
Property tax reform: Look for more incremental changes, "as many as a dozen." Particularly a strengthening of rules requiring that foreclosures be used when figuring a taxable value, a requirement that a property's sale price would be the taxable value for at least the first year and a requirement capping annual value increases by some percentage.
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