The Grand River Dam Authority members await word that Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has signed a bill to increase the authority’s bonding capacity as part of its attempt to expand electricity generation.
As NonDoc reported, HB 1422 was sent to the governor’s desk late Thursday night but as of Tuesday, the legislative history of the bill did not reflect any signature into law by the governor.
Below is NonDoc’s reporting of what transpired about the approval of the measure.
When the State Senate sent the bill hiking the Grand River Dam Authority’s bonding capacity — HB 1422 — to the governor’s desk late Thursday night, President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton stepped into his chamber’s lobby, grinned and flashed GRDA Executive Vice President John Wiscaver an ironic thumbs up.
Wiscaver had spent much of this year’s session imploring Paxton to walk back from his position that GRDA should make a contribution to the state’s General Revenue Fund — a tax on cities and towns that buy GRDA power, Wiscaver argued. For months, Wiscaver had wondered when Paxton (R-Tuttle) and House Speaker Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) would call the statutorily required meeting of the Joint Legislative Task Force on GRDA so that he could make his case for the bond hike and against the GRF deposit.
Hours before Thursday’s vote, Paxton described his thinking on the GRDA request during his weekly press conference.
“I support their idea of [adding more electricity generation capacity]. There is, in my opinion, a risk — albeit small — (…) that is a state trust, and if there was some catastrophe where they couldn’t meet their bond obligations, even though there’s technically not a legal connection between and the state obligating those bonds, I think at the end of the day if you have communities that have no power, the backstop is the state,” Paxton said. “So my thought was there should be some compensation to the state for that so we could use it for other things. I don’t think I was the majority in the building. I don’t always get my way.”
Asked about whether the Legislature’s GRDA task force would fulfill its legal obligation to meet this week, Paxton said he had only learned that the task force “shall” meet during odd-numbered years after being asked about it by press weeks earlier.
“I didn’t know there was a ‘shall’ until you told me that a few weeks ago, and so I agree: There ‘shall’ be a meeting of that,” he said.
As of Sunday afternoon, however, no meeting of the task force had been announced by legislative leaders.
Source: NonDoc