OKLAHOMA STATE SENATE / From the desk of Sen. Jessica Garvin
This last week, my Senate Republican colleagues and I gathered together for the annual three-day Caucus Retreat to go over what we accomplished this past session and to collaborate on the main issues we’d like to address this session.
There are so many possibilities, but we constitutionally only have four months to get our work done, so it’s important that we have a focused game plan going in.
We discussed many of the topics reviewed during the interim studies, shared our constituents’ top concerns, and studied the state budget, along with state and national economic trends and forecasts.
Continuing my discussion on new laws that went into effect earlier this month, there are some that everyone should be aware of. Several deal with public safety issues, including better protecting child abuse victims who are minors by allowing a petition for a protective order to be filed on their behalf.
Another one will strengthen our state’s strangulation laws by removing the requirement that a person committing assault by strangulation intends to cause great bodily harm, which was a technicality that had kept some from being properly punished and held accountable for their violent actions. We also created the Victims of Human Trafficking and Prevention Revolving Fund under the Office of the Attorney General to help better educate the public about this ever-growing crime, improve law enforcement and service provider coordination, and also educate victims on how to expunge their records of any arrests or charges wrongly filed against them while they were being trafficked.
Several changes were also made to update the Crime Victims Compensation Act, which was created in 1981 to assist victims of violent crimes. This is a program administered by the Oklahoma District Attorney’s Council.
The new law increases the amount of time a victim can file a claim to the Crime Victims Compensation Board to 30 months, up from one year. It further increases victim compensation due to economic loss from injury or death and also for loss of wages or support for dependents of a deceased victim from $20,000 to $25,000.
Finally, we increased the cap on awards to better support victims and their families from $40,000 to $50,000.
Now that interim studies have wrapped up, our main focus is on requesting and filing legislation. Being the second session of the 59th Legislature, there will be some bills carry over from this past session, but we also have until Dec. 8 to request new ones.
If you have any questions or concerns on legislative matters, please contact me at the Capitol by writing to Senator Jessica Garvin, State Capitol, 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd. Room 237, Oklahoma City, OK, 73105, emailing me at [email protected] or calling 405-521-5522.
