The Oklahoma legislature again followed lobbyist money instead of the interests of their constituents when they voted to give the owners of the Sonics a 60 million dollar tax break by passing HB1819 last session. To see how much your legislator received from Sonic lobbyists, check out this website (http://davidhglover.googlepages.com/reverserobinhood)
Overall lobbyists for the tax credit gave about $600,000.00 in campaign contributions to legislators while encouraging them to vote for a 60 million dollar tax break. I sure wish I could get even half that on my investments. If you do an in depth calculation on the voting patterns; it shows that Representatives voting YES on the bill received an average of $3,167 in contributions while legislators voting No on the bill only received $1820. Senators voting YES were a little more expensive. They received an average of $7,100.00 while Senators voting no only received $3950. .
Meanwhile the infrastructure in our state is falling apart. The ASCE web site, http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=76, calculated in 2005 that the total bill to bring our bridges, roads, water and sewage systems up to par would be over 2.34 billion dollars. I have a feeling it is going to be very hard to get there if our legislature continues to let the lobbyists run our state.
Great information. Thanks BOG!
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