OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (KOKH) — The Oklahoma 60th Legislature adjourned its regular session on Friday, with an eventful final 24 hours.
The legislature voted to override nearly 50 bills on Thursday, which is a large chunk of the bills Governor Stitt vetoed this session.
A vetoed bill needed a two-thirds vote the veto from each chamber in order to still become law. Bills will an emergency needed a three-fourths vote.
The Senate Pro Tem and House Speaker told reporters they had been having conversations with the Governor on what bills they were looking at vetoing. They talked about it Thursday morning with the Governor as well.
“We’ve always got along. We’ve always worked hard at getting along. We kinda made that one of our priorities this year was to work hard with the executive branch with our other fellow legislators in the building and up until this morning that had gone really, really well. And, we were in fact very proud of that,” Senate Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton (R-Tuttle) said. “We were quite taken back and surprised when the Governor’s video came out.”
Governor Stitt released a video on social media on Thursday talking about veto overrides.
“You’ve got the Senate and the House and special interest groups that are trying to override my vetoes,” Stitt said in the video. “I vetoed 68 bills absolutely that were gonna put more regulation on businesses and cause higher taxes for Oklahomans.”
In the video Stitt also tells Oklahomans to remember how their legislators voted on the overrides when the 2026 election cycle arrives.
“We felt like that was pretty much out of bounds to do that, because everything that we had been doing was in good faith with everything that we had committed to doing with the Governor,” House Speaker Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) said. “And again, all the veto overrides in both the chambers that we had taken up to that point the Governor had told us he had no issues with us taking up and overriding.”
A bill to expand insurance access to mammograms will now become law. Lawmakers cheered as they overrode Governor Stitt’s veto of the bill. The House author of the bill, State Rep. Melissa Provenzano (D-Tulsa), is currently battling breast cancer.
The legislature reversed course for a bill to allow state funding for the Office of Liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons.
The legislature also overrode a bill to ensure people without a disability who are misrepresenting an animal as a service animal for special benefits will be guilty of a misdemeanor.
In the final hours of session lawmakers also voted to remove Allie Friesen as commissioner of the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
