Dear Friends:

Only 3 weeks left to finish the people's business. The budget was passed in a General Appropriations Bill last week, and all that is left of the budget this week is to approve the Full Time Employee limits of each agency, along with some minor wording changes for those agencies asking for special purposes like the ability to open up bids for certain things.

We honored Sen. Owen Laughlin from Woodward, the first legislator terming out this year. Each Senator that is 'retiring' is given an opportunity to invite family and special guests to be on the floor, time is given for Senators to address the retiree, and then the termed out legislator is given time to reflect on their 12 years of service to Oklahoma. Five Senators will be terming out this year; Owen Laughlin, Jim Williamson (Tulsa), Kathleen Wilcoxson (OKC), Mike Morgan (Stillwater) and Jeff Rabon (Hugo). So we know that we will have at least 5 new faces in the Oklahoma state senate next year.

Also, this was the week for the FHA kids to have their convention in OKC. We were blessed with a beautiful rendition of America The Beautiful from the All State choir that sang to us from the Senate gallery. Paul Hoey brought some of his Sand Springs 9th grade class by our office on Thursday.

Very few bills are coming back from the House. Those that have made it this far are either on their way to the Governor's desk, or in conference committee, which I spoke of last week. The controversial bills such as the Term Limit bill and English Only bill are on our desks waiting action. One bill that didn't start out controversial, but became one in the House is the Anesthesiologist Assistants Act. It began as a Chiropractic bill, was gutted in the House and came back with all new language creating a new classification of medical practitioners. Currently in Oklahoma we have Certified Nurse Anesthesiologists, but with the signature of the Governor we will have a new category of those offering anesthesia.

Also this week, we created a Task Force to look at ways we deal with Alzheimer's families and their issues and mandated that Kindergarten through Fifth grade have 120 minutes of physical education.

The House/Senate baseball game is this week. We raised over $700 for the American Cancer Society from legislators and will be taking donations again at the ball game. Hopefully, we can regain our title as Champions from those youngsters in the House.

As always, I look forward to hearing from you.

Senator Riley