Fri, Jul 18 2008
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Published May 13, 2008 09:46 pm - Doesn’t chair have a possible conflict? By Rep. Ed Cannaday Guest Columnist We are still working to prevent our counties from being responsible for incarcerated county prisoners for their pre-existing medical conditions and requiring insurance companies to live up to their obligation to continue coverage of an individual’s purchased health care coverage. This was in the form of Senate Bill 811. There is one more bill coming that will hopefully resolve all the issues on this matter. Speaking of insurance, as you probably are aware, there has been some degree of controversy over what has happened in the Economic Development and Financial Services Committee chaired by Rep. Ron Peterson, R-Tulsa, for denying a hearing of certain coverage issues such as autism and maintaining normal coverage while undergoing experimental tests and procedures. Well guess what? A possible explanation may be that the insurance lobby has given this chairman over $20,000 in contributions and his wife is actively engaged in this industry. This information won’t stop this, but it will help you understand why some good legislation never gets heard. As I have stated previously, nothing dies here but is in temporary repose. This was the case with SB 3124, which was to allow alternative certification of new teachers under the Teach for America program. We presumed that we had killed a bad portion of this bill, which would have allowed new “teacher candidates” to be exempt from the state-mandated Residency Program in which they would work under the coaching of a fellow teacher, administrator and college subject specialist. I asked the author to explain how the training under Teach for America would replicate the Residency Program, and he did not know the details of the program. The majority of the House voted for it anyway. I and 16 others voted against it based on our disagreement over the exemption clause. My experience has shown that the Residency Program has contributed to good novice teachers being encouraged to pursue their future while those who should not be in the classroom are able to be coached and shown that there are other career paths that would be best for them. Our students are the most valuable asset we have, so why do we want to place people in very influential positions without time-tested oversight and coaching? As the session winds down we look back to see if we are addressing issues that were on the radar screen last year. A case in point is last year’s Department of Correction audit that cost you $880,000, which I and others opposed. This audit made 180 legislative recommendations. As of now there have been zero legislative proposals dealing with these recommendations. My conclusion is that this was a “sweetheart deal” for an auditor. We are now looking at another high-dollar audit, $500,000, of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. I hope that we will not duplicate the fiscal irresponsibility that occurred last year of having a high-dollar audit and then not complying with the findings and thus becoming another job-creating program for high-dollar auditors. E-mail District 15 state Rep. Ed Cannaday, D-Porum, by Clicking Here 
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