Late Tuesday night, as the clock struck midnight, Oklahoma lawmakers introduced two budget bills that had been eagerly awaited for weeks.
As The Oklahoman reports,one of the bills includes funding for teacher pay raises, and the other doesn’t. The bills were introduced at 11:14 p.m., and the House budget committee had 46 minutes to approve them before midnight, to meet a procedural deadline. Legislators now have a few days to review the bills.
The measure that includes a teacher raise would cut funding to state agencies by eight percent, to pay for the raises. The bill that does not include raises for educators would still cut funding to state agencies by five percent.
Oklahoma lawmakers have consistently struggled to find ways to plug the state’s $900 million budget hole without raising taxes.
