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Group Starts Gathering Signatures for Veto of Oklahoma Special Session Revenue Package

A group backed by former Oklahoma U.S. Senator Tom Coburn has started its quest to put state lawmakers’ special session tax hikes to a popular vote.

"You know, if people want their taxes raised, then they can vote in favor of it, and if they don’t want their taxes raised, they can vote no," said Oklahoma Taxpayers Unite co-founder Rhonda Vuillemont-Smith.

Oklahoma Taxpayers Unite needs at least 41,242 signatures by mid-July to get a veto referendum for House Bill 1010XX on the ballot. Vuillemont-Smith said despite there being multiple proposals and votes over the past year, lawmakers took the easy way out by raising taxes instead of auditing every part of state government.

"Had the audits been done and had they proved that there was fiscal responsibility with the dollars that they already have and proved to the citizens that they needed a tax increase, I don’t think that we would be opposed to that," Vuillemont-Smith said. "But none of that’s been done."

If approved, the veto referendum would wipe out more than $470 million in Oklahoma’s 2019 budget.

Vuillemont-Smith said the group would also like to see 65 percent of education funding go to classrooms and teachers, though that's not a proposal they have a way to advance.

"If we would do that, teachers would get a great raise, there’d be plenty of stuff for the classroom, but, you see, the problem is the superintendents and administration don’t want that to occur because that’s going to cut into their budget.

The most recent Census Bureau figures show about 8 percent of total district spending in Oklahoma went to general and school administration.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.