Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome me. It's time now for our community connection right here on KAY one, the one you trust, and we have state Representative John B. Kane, who also has the Kinge's column on Bartlesville Radio dot com. He's also your representative. And how you doing there, John B. Hey, I'm doing really well. As you know. We wrapped up our legislative session yesterday evening rather late. I think I got home ten fifteen or so last night. But
it's great to be home. Man. I just love getting back to Bartlesville and getting back into District eleven. And I think we had a good session. It was for me since it was my second year in. It was a better session because I was more. I was just prepared for what was coming. You know, a year of experience, it means a lot, and I was happy to have it, and I think I'll be better even
going back here next year. So just excited it's over, though, because if you don't want us down there any longer than we have to be, we'll just cause we'll just cause a problem. Now, John, you mentioned in your column and you also mentioned here a couple of times on our Capital Call program that the disappointed a bit that we didn't get that any kind of tax cut, going yeah, detail that. Yeah, I'm disappointed. We could have done it. I mean, let's say I'm moderately disappointed because it's
still a lot done. But we did get a lot done and it's still on the table, and you know, we did we did get the grocery sales tax, the state portion of the sales tax removed, and that's that's this is the first budget year that that's going to impact it. So I think, you know, I can understand someone saying, well, let's just let's watch what happens here, let's make sure we're okay. I, on the other hand, do feel like there's no doubt we're okay. I've seen
what the numbers look like. We're still exceeding revenue projections. So I think we could have done it. But the good news is we still kept a very conservative budget like I think that most Oklahomas would want, and we've had the four point eight billion dollars in savings right now that still gives us.
That leaves all these things on the table. It could be a tax cut, we could continue to you know, some of the deferred maintenance on our state facilities over two really important, and it gives us the ability to address these you know, my gosh, you know, ten years ago these couldn't even be discussed because we were just trying to get by and fund whatever core services we could. But we do have an obligation to take care of our assets once we build them and take you know, like any business, you
don't let them fall down and go to ruin. So but the fact that we've conservatively budgeted, it's left all these discussions on the table. We can prioritize it. We could spend money and take care of things that need to be taken care of. Well, you mentioned a problem that the state never really had a few years ago, but it was a good problem to have. What do we do with the savings? Yes, how do we account for it? How do we yeah, how do we put this on the
books? We're saving money? Because I would first talk to the fiscal staff now there and I said, okay, where where's the savings? I can't see here's well, and why can't we get a number that's the same that everybody understands because it was in oighteen different accounts, and it was some of it was actually labeled as savings. Some of it was just in what would
you call them, revolving funds. So now we've now that we have this money, we're getting better at accounting for it, handling it, and knowing what we have. And so I feel pretty confident will be at a minimum at the end of this year, which is the end of June, end of this fiscal year, will be at least at four point eight five billion, and it could it could get up closer closer to that five billion, depending on what happens. You know, a lot of states don't have this.
I'm going to tell you Oklahoma's very blessed. Iowa has this. Oklahoma has this, Illinois, New York, California, they New Jersey, they don't have U. They're running on hopeing a prayer and maybe tomorrow will be a better day. It's become pretty clear from a fiscal standpoint at least, and I will argue many other standpoints, but the conservatively run, Republican run states are outperforming the others by quite a margin, and I think it's only
escalating. You're seeing more and more outward migration from these liberal states into more conservative states like Oklahoma. You know, we're a top ten state as far as in migration net My gosh, you know, who would have thought that was going to happen in nineteen eighty five, you know, but here we are, and it's because we've taken care of our business. We haven't seen this kind of in migration since statehood begin That's right, that's right, This
is pretty good, John, you're a big proponent of education. We saw some education bills come by anything take you pique your interest there as far as it's very important ones. You know, we we continue to fund education extremely well. We we continue to address the teacher shortage with signing bonuses. That
was an effective program of bringing teachers in. And then it's also in the we're paying student teachers now for the first time to try and say, hey, we're going to help you get through, finish your finish your degree. If you're going to come help us out, we're going to pay you something. And I think all these things are part of the answer. Note there's no silver bullet, but I think we continue to put our money where our mouth is. We don't just say education is truly kind of the top item
in the state. If you look at what's going to propel us in the future. We have to have an educated workforce and people and that create jobs that stay here. We want we want our young people to stay here. And we made a lot of good maybe not well it's education, but it's take career tech. We made a nice investment. We made a nice investment in career tech for workforce development. But that's something that we went down there over the last year or two years that's been talked about a lot. Well
we've addressed that in any ways. So you know, that's not something you get an immediate payback on, but you just have to keep doing your best and on faith that that's the right thing to do well for a long time here in Oklahoma, if you didn't have a cattle to ranch or oil to work for or develop, you know, you really didn't have a reason to
stay here. You could do anything other than that. In any state in America, you know, you could do this, do that, or whatever, be a doctor or a lawyer, maybe go to some other state. But now with all these different things that are here, it makes people want to stay here, raise their families here, knowing darn well that the kids have a better chance at finding jobs Aaron and I I mean, my goodness
sakes, that field is wide open for that. A variety of different professions, a lot of different professions, and they're all very well paying jobs. And as they're growing, industry shows no sign of slowing up. Of course, we got our own Kevin Potters. There's only Anononyx commission. He was down in Oklahoma City last week helping, helping the state, and well, we're lucky to have people like that in all our commissions, but Kevin,
that being down there helping on that is is big. But yeah, those things are really a I don't know when I've never been more optimistic for our state right now. You know, you see Tulsa and Oklahoma City just continuing to climb the rankings of you know, all the good metrics, you know, whether it's cost of living of course, it's jobs, it's new business startups. They it's really turned. Both of those cities are doing so well, and it's it's reaching out into some of the rural areas too. So
it's a good time to be in Oklahoma. I promise you that, and you know I will I want to say something, you know, do this. You know I'm gonna be back here in just a little bit and doing capitol calling and with my good friend jud And. But I so I'm gonna pivot a little bit to what's going on in Bartlesville, because you know, again it did we kind of led right into it. I mean, I think there's reasons for optimism here, just like there is all over the state.
I come back and I'm never I'm always amazed at how many great things are going on here. You know, we got SunFest getting ready to kick off, and we got Okam getting ready to kick off. You know, Kitty Park's open. What an investment. We can thank Ken Johnson for coming into Bartlesill, Oklahoma, where he was born and raised and still having that connection that he wanted to do something. And if you have not been down to see what he's had done at the Kitty Park, please go down.
Oh my goodness, we owe him a great debt of gratitude and seeing those kinds of things happen. I see, we got a new new fire chief. But he's a guy that's from Bartlesville. A matter of fact, he stayed in my district. He was he left Bartlesville to become the chief in Collinsville and then be Coore talking about HC. Call And now he's going to take that take over here after Chief Toppings retired after thirty five years. You know he's gotten a he deserves, deserves a good retirement. Well you ran
into enough burning buildings. He can retire. Yeah, and you know, a shameless promotion here, But I will say, you know, I'll start this by thanking my wife because she she manages my Facebook page. Oh, she helps me so much. I don't know how a person does this job without a spouse or somebody that's still committed to it. Like she loves this. She loves Bartlesville in district at eleven just like I love it. So she's she's an important part of this work for me. And she keeps this
up up for me. But now where was I going on that? Oh but you could go to my Facebook page and she all this information is there, the good news, what's going on, what's happen in Bartlesville, whether it's the farmer's market. You know, you just got me your ambling here. I was out in the district a couple of weeks ago, and I was speaking to a young man at the very Cafe and he told me about
Throw Town Ramona. Do you know what throw Town Ramona is. It's a track and field for the throwing sports, you know, the discus, the shot put, the hammer. And this man started it. He was He's done very well for himself. He's got a coach that came in. They set a world record discus throw a man from Lithuania. We're drawing people from all over the world to Ramona, Oklahoma to throw because they've set it up, because they're knowledgeable on how to say and they set it up where the
wind is right and everything. And they've got four different pits to throw out of. And I'm telling you what, we ought to embrace this because I don't know what this could become. But they have people. When I I just stopped in unannounced, they had something going on and there were kids there from Georgia, there were kids there for Florida. There were kids there all in participating in a tournament and they were they were national champion type track and
field athletes. And it's in a pasture south of Ramona, Oklahoma, on the Old Highway, and it's incredible. It's just if you look around a little bit, you can find some amazing things. A nettle kidding espn ought to be I think I think you ought to take it. You ought to go all check it out. I will. And they I think they deserve to be talked about a little bit. I just first first heard about them when I saw a world record was set in Ramona, Oklahoma, and I
thought it was a typo. And sure enough, and they're doing incredible things for track athletes in that down in that Ramona. Wow, I'll be yeah, it's awesome. Another gym in the area, another gym in the area. It's and of course we got voting coming up. We got camp AIM's going on. Sure it's coming up on the eighteenth. We've got some forums and things that will be going on too. Will be talking to a lot of folks about that on the radio here pretty soon. You don't have an
opponent this year. No are you having a primary opponent, nor do you have opposing party opponent. Yeah, I feel I feel very blessed with that. You know, if there's at this point doing this job. And my great friend Earl Sears told me when we were talking about me potentially running for this office, you know, we really have two things. You have to do and constitutionally we have to pass a balanced budget every year. Okay, check. But the second thing is to advocate for our district. And so
this gives me time. Sometimes the line between campaigning and doing the job is kind of blurry because it's my job to be out to talk to people, listen to people. I want I want calls, I want emails, I want texts. I want to understand what District eleven, what's going on here and what we need. How can I what can I do in Oklahoma City
that will help us here? And that's so that's the other important part of my job, and that this interim period gives me that great opportunity to really be out and round more and please, I mean, I'm going to give them my cell phone number one more time they do call it at nine one eight four four zero seven two nine five, and I will answer that phone.
And if there's something like I'm working on a constituent request. There's some question as to taking money out of your HSA account, your health savings account after you reach the age of sixty five. There seems to be some then the law doesn't seem to be definitely clear. If we follow the irs law of saying that that there's no penalty for taking it out of your HSA at that age or is there a penalty. We're trying to get that figured out.
But if it isn't clear, I'm going to try to run some legislation just to clear that up, because it shouldn't be a penalty to take that out your money at that age. Yeah, you put it in, you get it out. So but I know that because a constituent called me and a constituent had concerns, and I wouldn't have thought to be looking into that. And that's what I love. I love to hear things from people. And I'll be out and around and check that Facebook page out as John John
Kane for okay, and Barbara keeps that thing up so well. She does an amazing job. Wow, that's the great way for to stay in touch with me. John, Thanks for being with us. We'll see you here in about an hour. I'll be back. It would be more like forty five minutes, but we'll have you on Capitol. Thank you for being with us today. Thanks a lot, Tom folks, you've been listing and watching our community connection. When it comes to your children, it choosing the right
daycare is important. You want peace of mind knowing you're putting your child in the care of the best facility. Wesley and Kitty