Is there evidence any of these bills are likely to actually become law? Individual people in congress (on the state and federal level) submit harebrained bills all the time that go nowhere and seem to serve no purpose other than for people on the opposing political side to point to them and say "See?! This is how crazy the opposing side is!"
Let's take the homeless shelter bill that prohibits creation and funding of them by governments outside of in the largest cities, which seems to be getting the most attention here.
First, I should point out that the description in the opening post is misleading. It claims it "Makes it illegal for for [sic] homeless shelters and outreach to exist outside of Tulsa and OKC. This may also include battered women’s shelters."
This isn't what it does. It makes it illegal for
city-run homeless shelters to exist. If a non-governmental charity wants to set one up, they can. durangodawood nicely posted the text in this topic, and we can see what it says is "No municipality of this state with a population less than three hundred thousand (300,000) according to the most recent Federal Decennial Census shall provide programs or services to homeless persons including, but not limited to, owning or leasing land for the purpose of building or maintaining a homeless shelter." See what that says? It says the municipalities--the city governments--can't provide the programs or services to homeless persons. It doesn't say
other entities like charities can't.
So already the opening post's statement that it makes it illegal for homeless shelters to exist is simply false, when it applies only to the city-run ones.
But, okay, someone might say. Even if they exaggerated a bit, isn't it still a silly law to actually
prohibit the creation of homeless shelters? It does sound a bit odd to me indeed. But this then brings us to the next point: Is there any reason to believe this bill has any actual chance of becoming law? So far, its status was that it was written up and submitted. And... that's it. Hasn't gone to committee or had anything done with it yet. The legislative session doesn't even start until Monday! All that's happened is that someone wrote up a bill and submitted it, and we have no indication yet that there is any particular interest in passing it.
For the record, at least some lawmakers have expressed skepticism of the bill:
ADA, Okla. (KTEN) — Next Monday, Oklahoma lawmakers will return to the Capitol, begin the 60th legislative session, and read through bills that have been filed in the last several
www.kten.com
Townley said she's not confident that Senate Bill 484 will get very far at the Oklahoma Capitol.
"If these cities want to fund these programs, it should be up to the city," the lawmaker said. "If one of these not-for-profits want to fund any of these programs, that should be their choice. It still has a long, long, long way to go before it's law. I don't see it even making it very far in committee."
Amendments could be made to the legislation, which is scheduled to get its first reading on Monday.
So unless there is any particular reason to believe any of these bills as they currently stand will become law, these criticisms seems to be the same thing as when some silly California law gets submitted by one or two state legislatures and conservatives use it to talk about how crazy the Democrats are, even though the bill ended up being dead on arrival and went nowhere.
