2020 OK Engaged Election Night; OK Engaged Live 2A

Well, good afternoon everyone and welcome to Oklahoma engaged live voice of the voter episode number two. It's here on KGOU will be here each Monday afternoon and October leading up to the 2020 general election. Discussion and analysis of what's motivating voters to get to the polls this fall. I'm KGOU managing editor Logan Layden and we want to talk to you. The final portion of each show will include all your hosts and guests taking questions from listeners. So submit your questions now via Twitter and Facebook. It's at KGOU News. The hashtag Okay Engaged, hashtag Okay Engaged. Also by email news at KGOU.org or by phone at 405-325 KGOU. Today I'll be joined by state impact Oklahoma reporters Catherine Swini and Quentin Chandler to discuss a couple of the state questions on November's ballot. Then KGOU General Manager Dick Pryor has state election board secretary Paul Zerix as we navigate this unusual election.

We want to get started right away here and bring in Catherine Swini and Quentin Chandler first Catherine. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Not at all and Quentin Chandler Chandler you too. Thanks for hopping in with us this afternoon. Absolutely thanks Logan. You know I think I want to start with you Quentin some of the as I've been in the voting booths in the past some of the more confusing things can be some of the state questions that we have in front of us. Something maybe people don't always fully prepared to go and vote on in a presidential election. One of them on the ballot this fall is state question 805 and it has to do with criminal justice. Your state impacts criminal justice reporter let's start out just basically here tell us what state question 805 is and what it would do. Yeah Logan so state question in 805 starts to get into some of the more detailed parts of policy with regard to criminal justice.

Essentially the state question is asking voters should we continue to take people who are convicted of non violent crimes and that would be a non violent means crimes that are not listed under state statute at or classified under state statute as a violent crime. It's an important legal definition. We take people who are convicted of these non violent crimes and allow their maximum sentences under the law to be increased because they had a past non violent conviction and the people who are behind state question 805. The state question itself is asking voters to say no to stop increasing the maximum sentence allowed for these individuals who have passed non violent conviction because they essentially the tool that allows courts to do this called sentence enhancements are blamed for a large for driving increases in our state prison population. And for leading to people who are in prison having longer prison sentences than people in this people who are in prison and surrounding states.

Yeah so currently without this state question being law courts can look at a person's former convictions even though they're non violent and adjust up a sentence for a crime that they are currently been convicted of or being sentenced for right and this would stop that for non violent offenses. Precisely so if you have been convicted of possession of drugs with intent to distribute a felony crime that is not listed as a violent crime in the Oklahoma state statute if you were convicted five years ago and then you're arrested and convicted again for another felony crime. Essentially if the state question passes the court can't look back at this past felony that you can committed or even if you committed multiple felonies and the similar felonies in the past that were not classified as violent the court can look at that past history right now and say you need to have more than what the you need to have more time assigned to you than what the law already calls for. As the maximum sentence the state question is basically saying no no more of that who have when someone is convicted of possession with intent to distribute five years ago and now they're in court again for another crime another felony crime they need to be sentenced to the maximum allowed by state law without a sentence enhancement.

Yeah and so I you know it comes down to there is a difference here between a violent crime and non violent crime and a little bit of the kind of controversy around the state question has to do with domestic violence right could you explain that a little bit. Right so in state statute there are there's a long list of crimes that are labeled violent and some of them are pretty straightforward simple common sense like murder would be a violent crime and some of them are less so but domestic violence crimes for years have never been listed under the violent crime statute. And that's so back back in 2020 the beginning of 2020 the leaders of yes on 805 the individuals the groups that are leading the charge basically to get this about this ballot question on the ballot and hope to see it passed they wrote into the language that.

Violent crime would be defined as any crime that was listed under the violent crime statutes as of January 2020 and back in January 2020 there were no domestic violence crimes listed under the violent crime statute. Recently the legislature changed the loss of some a few crimes there classified as domestic violence crimes are now listed under the violent crime statute but the state questions language 805's language still points back to what was considered a violent crime back in January 2020 so under the state question there are no domestic violence crimes that that would qualify as a violent crime which means that they would not qualify for sentence enhancements if the state question passes and that's an important point to reinforce if the state question passes anything that is listed or was listed as a violent crime in January 2020 would still qualify for a sentence enhancement.

But it's the crimes that are not listed as violent under state statute that would not qualify for sentence enhancements anymore. Yeah and this is another as we talk about criminal justice reform in the state and across the country here in Oklahoma this is a this doesn't come from the legislature this comes for this is an initiative petition from from the people and that's been kind of a consistent theme as Oklahoma tries to reform criminal justice right. Right so the folks leading the charge on this particular ballot initiative are sorry are the Oklahoma's for criminal justice reform they were behind state question seven 80 and stick question seven 81 that voters saw on the ballot in 2016 they've been behind a lot of reform measures that have entered the legislature over the past few years and yes they have basically said because the legislator. Because the legislature has not taken questions like whether or not we should be applying sentence enhancements to people who are convicted of crimes that are not classified as violent crimes.

They want to take the issue to the voters because they feel like the legislature has not address this issue and it's also important to note that sentence enhancements have been marked as a driver of the prison. The high populations in Oklahoma the task force the Justice Reform Task Force that Governor Mary Fallon former Governor Mary Fallon helped put together back in the sorry I believe it's 2015 2016 was 2017 when they released their report they said that sentence enhancements were a big factor in Oklahoma having a higher prison population for relative to its population. So Oklahoma's for criminal justice reform other reform advocates are basically saying the legislature isn't tackling some of these critical questions about whether or not about how we should be approaching criminal justice and how many people we want to see in our prison system and how we want to address crime in our state. People who are against the state question are saying that they are going too far basically that they are starting to enter these issues of policy that are very complicated and have serious unintended consequences.

And one of the big points that groups against 805 have been making is that the state question amends the Constitution whereas past state questions like state question 788 and 781 change state statute so the legislature could go back behind the state question and make changes easily. This initiative does amend the Constitution which is much which makes it much more difficult to change if there are an intended consequences. Quentin thanks for explaining to us here a little bit this afternoon that state question 805 talking about state question 814 Catherine Sweeney same kind of question just basically here as a public service to people out there who don't know tell us about the state question what it would do and what it is. So 814 is another state question that's pretty complicated in the past I think that we've had these state questions where you can sum them up really easily in one sentence but 814 is not one of those i've been telling a few friends what i'm working on i'm writing a story about 814 realize that takes you know sentences to explain it.

Um first yeah tea set is oh back in the nine about 46 sood a big group of tobacco companies saying our Medicaid costs of skyrocketed because of your product you need to reimburse us and they settled so it was one of those 46 states and now i'm as one of. Pack up having a little bit of technical difficulty with you there Catherine we created keys. You know can be difficult during covid something we're always dealing with yeah we do just have a couple of minutes left here but yeah just just very basically this Oklahoma expanded Medicaid earlier this year and then we do have an obligation there's an obligation for the state. To to to pay for for some of that and how to do that is you know difficult to figure out during what's a terrible economic time in the state because of the covid 19 pandemic so yeah if we have a little bit stable or connection here we got another minute or so if you could try to explain it to us there.

To us sorry about the Wi-Fi connection so essentially a long time ago Oklahoma started getting payments from tobacco companies some of their sales to pay for we put it into a trust instead of spending it so we kind of have this big account we invest money in and the earnings go to public health initiatives some of that is cancer research some of that is nutrition messaging it's pretty multifaceted at this point. But that trust gets 75% of the money from those payments every year this would shift that money over to Medicaid and the reason that they're wanting to do it now we expand and Medicaid it's going to cost a bit but the deal is that Oklahoma for every dollar they put in the federal government matches with $9 so the plan is that we're going to put in about 150 million and we'll get about a billion back. There's some as Logan said there is some contention over how we should get in 50 million dollars people who criticize 814 would tell you that we don't need to get this is an infusion of a billion dollars into our health care system coverage of 200,000 additional working Oklahomans would pay for itself and we need this money for the public health initiative such as cancer research others would tell you 150 million dollars is a lot of money.

And we're in a really tough year and so that is a little bit of the debate right now where should that money go continuing public health initiatives or this essentially someone argue one time payment to expand Medicaid because we're going to start giving a lot of money from the expansion to you. Well thank you very much Catherine and both Quentin Chandler and Catherine Sweeney are state impact reporters will be sticking around for the full hour here as we take questions from listeners but between now and then we're going to take a quick break here and it'll be KGOU General Manager Dick Pryor joined by state election board secretary Paul Xerox after a short break here. It's Oklahoma engaged live voice of the voter on KGOU and once again you can dial 405 325 KGOU to submit your questions by phone or use the hashtag okay engaged on social media.

Thanks for joining us on this Monday afternoon I'm Nick Daniels from the KGOU Studios in Norman. The chair of the Oklahoma County Board of County Commissioners is suing his own jail trust of which he is also a member state impacts Quentin Chandler reports the lawsuit is an attempt to force the trust to cooperate with ice. County Commissioner Kevin Calvi first introduced a rule that would require the county jail to cooperate with immigration and customs enforcement and attain people for the agency when it asks. After the board passed that rule in a two one vote Calvi added his name onto this lawsuit alongside a private citizen named Tom Vineyard and the gun rights group okay to a they want the Oklahoma County District Court to declare the trust must comply with the new policy. Trust chair Trisha Everest says she didn't know about the lawsuit until reporters surprised her with the news Friday she says the trust hasn't had a chance to decide its position on the county's mandate to cooperate with ice.

Late last month the trust voted to remove an ice agent from the jail but the vote failed over a technicality Everest says she'll wait and see what the court decides for state impacts I'm Quentin Chandler. And you're tuned to KGOU your NPR source for more news follow us on social media or at KGOU News on Facebook Instagram and Twitter.