Transportation among 2026 legislative priorities of OKC Chamber

Greater Oklahoma City Chamber Adopts 2026 Legislative Priorities

The Chamber’s board of directors recently adopted a comprehensive set of public policy priorities for the 2026 legislative session, which are crucial to creating a strong future for Oklahoma businesses. These priorities reflect the Chamber’s top legislative priorities and are designed to address the key issues that will shape the state’s economic growth and development. Below is an excerpt of key priorities.

View the full list at okcchamber.com/legislative.

1. Educational Outcomes – Advance policies that strengthen reading, math, and overall academic performance, supported by continuous monitoring through a comprehensive data system.       
2. Transportation Priorities – Advance investment in a modern transportation system that keeps pace with regional growth. This includes expanding roadway capacity, strengthening public transit options, and integrating multimodal infrastructure to ensure residents and businesses can move efficiently and safely throughout the region.
3. Improve Mental Health Outcomes and Expand Attainable Housing – Collaborate with the State of Oklahoma and regional partners to strengthen mental health outcomes and reduce homelessness through expanded access to services and attainable housing solutions.
4. County Government Reform and New Jail Construction – Advance reforms that strengthen the efficiency and effectiveness of county government, while constructing a modern jail that reduces recidivism, streamlines court operations, and expands opportunities for justice-involved individuals to successfully reenter the workforce.

Other 2026 legislative priorities include:

Business and Economic Development priorities

• County Government Reform
  • The Chamber supports empowering Oklahoma counties to alter their form of government to meet their unique needs.
• Protecting Critical Infrastructure
  • The Chamber recognizes that the protection of critical infrastructure—including energy facilities, education facilities, communication networks, water systems, transportation hubs, and healthcare institutions—is essential to public safety, economic stability, and national security. The increasing accessibility and sophistication of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or drones, present new and evolving risks to these assets. Unauthorized drone activity can disrupt operations, compromise security, endanger personnel, and expose sensitive information.
  • To address these emerging threats, the Chamber supports the development and enforcement of comprehensive federal, state and local policies to prevent, detect, and respond to unauthorized drone intrusions over critical infrastructure.
• Improve Workplace Safety/Mental Health
  • Enhancing mental health infrastructure is essential to improving workforce participation, reducing absenteeism, and lessening the economic and social costs of untreated mental illness and substance use disorders.
  • The Chamber supports state and local efforts to strengthen Oklahoma’s behavioral health system by increasing the availability of treatment beds and expanding the network of qualified service providers.
• Attainable Housing for Families
  • The Chamber supports data-driven, results-oriented state and local policies that address homelessness through coordinated systems of care and solutions targeting root causes such as mental health, housing access, criminal justice reform, and substance use.
  • The Chamber also supports legislation that drives public and private investment in attainable, workforce, and mixed-income housing to promote growth and community reinvestment. The Chamber will also oppose policies that would make it more difficult for communities to address homelessness in their area.
• Protecting and Improving Incentive Programs
  • The Chamber supports the Oklahoma Incentive Evaluation Commission (IEC), which was established to make recommendations to the Legislature and governor on which incentive programs are serving their intended purpose and creating economic/community development. If an incentive program cannot show a positive return to the state, it should be scaled back or repealed.
  • The Chamber supports re-positioning and broadening the mission of the IEC to require a thorough review be conducted of incentive programs offered by other states. The purpose of this review would be to learn “best practices” to ensure Oklahoma is offering the most effective, up-to-date, and innovative incentives possible. 

Education and Workforce Development Priorities

• Increasing Learning Capacities of Oklahoma Students
  • The Chamber supports providing additional and enhanced learning opportunities that utilize recognized best practices and extended learning opportunities to address student data from Pre-K to Higher Ed student learning loss. It is important to help students catch up by having more time on tasks, including longer school days and additional instructional days. In addition, we are supportive of extended summer learning opportunities and after school programs. A focus on research-based literacy and numeracy programs that work to enable students at all grade levels to improve reading proficiency and comprehension skills through training and additional funding is supported.
    • Enact legislation requiring all K-12 Local Education Agencies (LEA’s) to adopt high-quality, evidence-based curriculum materials in core subjects (ELA, Mathematics, Science) from a state-approved list.
    • Amend statutes to explicitly require all K-8 public schools to implement core reading programs and instructional practices aligned with the “Science of Reading”.
    • Establish a statewide program to fund and support high-impact tutoring initiatives, particularly for students in grades 3-8 struggling with reading and math, to address learning loss.
    • Enact legislation that grants K-12 schools and districts broad flexibility to waive compliance with certain state statutes or administrative rules, provided that the waivers are tied to specific, measurable goals for improving student outcomes and are subject to periodic review and accountability.
    • Establish a statewide framework for identifying, tracking, and intervening with chronically absent students, requiring districts to use data dashboards and implement evidence-based strategies.
    • Establish a detailed plan for 3rd grade retention initiatives that provide supports for students, teachers, and families.
• Statewide Longitudinal Data System
  • The chamber recognizes the need for a robust and comprehensive Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) as a top priority for advancing education and economic outcomes across our state. The SLDS is essential to ensuring that data-driven decisions guide educational strategies, workforce readiness initiatives and policy development to empower stakeholders, including educational institutions, employers and policymakers, to make informed choices that improve the long-term success of our students and workers. To ensure the system operates effectively, strong data governance is vital. Oklahoma is the only state that DOES NOT have a longitudinal data system, thereby placing a disadvantage on our educational decision makers and stakeholders.  Data governance provides the framework of policies, standards and roles to ensure data is used and protected in a responsible manner. Data governance includes data stewardship and ownership; data quality and integrity; data security and privacy; data access and sharing; policy and standards compliance; data lifecycle management and oversight.

Transportation Priorities

• ROADS Fund/Regional Infrastructure Development
  • The Chamber supports continued high-level conversations on providing significant further increases to the Rebuilding Oklahoma Access and Driver Safety (ROADS) Fund, the key funding mechanism for ODOT’s Eight-Year Plan, to combat ongoing inflation and reduced purchasing power for materials, manpower and maintenance.
• Work Zone Safety
  • The Chamber supports developing technologies critical to protecting the safety of the traveling public, ODOT personnel, and contractors within ODOT work zones which can become highly dangerous due to vehicles exceeding the posted speed limit.
• Heartland Flyer 
  • The Chamber supports achieving long-term funding stability for passenger rail service, known as “The Heartland Flyer”, connecting Oklahoma City with Fort Worth, Texas. Our objective is to work with governmental partners to identify stable, long-term funding sources to mitigate scenarios where continued service is threatened by the current precarious and unsustainable year-to-year funding timetable.
  • Furthermore, the Chamber supports continued efforts to aggressively pursue federal funding opportunities that, if awarded, would connect Oklahoma City to the national rail network via Newton, Kansas. The Chamber will continue to take active steps in partnership with Federal entities, the Oklahoma Legislature, Oklahoma Department of Transportation, Oklahoma Congressional Delegation, specific communities, Texas, and Kansas to capitalize on opportunities emanating from Oklahoma’s selection as part of the “Corridor ID” program set forth in the U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021).

Healthcare and Life Sciences Priorities 

• Develop Statewide Solutions to Funding Losses in Medicaid
  • The Chamber opposes the Medicaid coverage reductions proposed in H.R. 1, as these cuts would lead to insufficient access to care due to decreases in a facility’s resources (particularly in rural and underserved areas) and impose significant costs on Oklahoma City’s business community. Reduced coverage would shift financial burdens onto employers and employees through higher insurance premiums and increased uncompensated care.
  • The Chamber also opposes any federal action that undermines healthcare reforms enacted by the Oklahoma Legislature to improve population health and address workforce challenges.
  • The Chamber supports state and federal leaders in advancing alternative and sustainable policy solutions that protect recent healthcare gains and strengthen long-term stability for Oklahoma employers, workers, and consumers.
• Research and Development 
  • The Chamber supports efforts to foster a federal policy environment that is conducive to further research and will oppose efforts to unreasonably restrict the continued development of national bioscience and research programs.
• Protecting Networks/Opposing Mandates
  • The Chamber opposes legislation, restrictions, regulations and taxes that would reduce or eliminate incentives for medical providers to contract with managed care networks and, as a result, frustrate efforts at cost and quality control and deny consumers the benefits of cost-reducing arrangements with providers.
  • The Chamber further opposes legislation that would interfere with an employer’s ability to offer affordable health benefits by limiting plan design flexibility, including the management of prescription drug benefits.
  • The Chamber opposes new health insurance mandates and liabilities imposed on employers that undermine their ability to provide quality health insurance to employees at a reasonable cost.
  • The Chamber further opposes new mandates placed on physicians, hospitals and other healthcare providers that increase the cost of delivering quality healthcare in Oklahoma.