Bill Coleman

Following the successful conclusion of the 2022 regular session, we immediately convened in special session to continue work disbursing the state’s nearly $1.9 billion portion of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) pandemic relief funds. The Legislature established the Joint Committee on Pandemic Relief Funding last summer to assist in Oklahoma’s planning for the relief funds.

After months of work, we adjourned session on Friday, May 27 as our state’s constitution requires. With so many people involved, we never quite get everything accomplished that we want, but we got really close this year. Overall, I’m very happy with what policies and reforms we were able to get to the governor’s desk.

We survived another deadline week, sending just over 200 House bills on to the governor’s desk or back to their chamber for further consideration. Across the rotunda, the House approved more than 200 Senate bills as well. Governor Stitt has also been busy, and has signed approximately 100 measures into law, including two of my Senate bills and two House bills.

State Senator Bill Coleman has filed for re-election to the Oklahoma State Senate District 10. Bill will be seeking re-election to his second term in office, first being elected in 2018. About Senator Coleman. Bill Coleman is proud to represent Senate District 10, which covers all of Osage County and...

Ten weeks in and another major deadline is behind us. On Thursday, we completed work on House bills in our Senate committees and our colleagues across the rotunda did the same. In total, more than 550 House and Senate bills moved forward in the legislative process. We now have two weeks to work through the nearly 270 House bills in our chamber. In all, nine of my Senate bills and nine House bills I’m carrying advanced and will soon be heard in their respective chamber. We have until April 28 to take final action on these measures.

Following the house of origin deadline on March 24, any Senate bills that weren’t heard or were voted down in our chamber are done for this session. However, those bills that made it out of the Senate are officially halfway through the legislative process. They’ll now have to go through the committee process and floor votes in the House in order to get to the governor’s desk. In turn, our attention is now focused on the House legislation being assigned to our Senate Committees.

It was an extremely long week, but we were able to report nearly 140 more Senate bills out of our chamber by the Thursday deadline. Overall, we approved around 320 Senate measures and sent them on to the House for further consideration. We’ll spend the next three weeks working on the nearly 375 House bill that were sent to our chamber.

We passed several bills off the floor Monday and Tuesday this past week. Among those were a couple of mine, including one to allow brewers to import seltzer to make this product in state, and another to standardize how Oklahoma’s two largest online property rental companies pay the state’s lodging tax. Both of these will help boost small businesses and local tourism.

Five weeks down, many more to go. At the beginning of the week, we had nearly 330 Senate bills left on the floor agenda to get through by March 24. Given that this coming week is Spring Break and we’ll be adjourning on Tuesday, we’d need to hear at least 30 bills a day to get through them all, but as always happens, many of these measures won’t move forward. This typically happens because there is a House bill on the same issue, the language will be added to another bill, or the author chooses not to have their bill heard.

Five weeks down, many more to go. At the beginning of the week, we had nearly 330 Senate bills left on the floor agenda to get through by March 24. Given that this coming week is Spring Break and we’ll be adjourning on Tuesday, we’d need to hear at least 30 bills a day to get through them all, but as always happens, many of these measures won’t move forward. This typically happens because there is a House bill on the same issue, the language will be added to another bill, or the author chooses not to have their bill heard.