Representative Jadine Nollan endorsed by James Lankford for fifth term

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Incumbent Representative Jadine Nollan was recently endorsed by U.S. Senator James Lankford. (SUBMITTED).

Jadine Nollan is a household name in the Sand Springs community. After ten years on the Sand Springs Board of Education followed by eight years in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, she’s asking for House District 66 voters to trust her with another term in the State Legislature.

A lifelong Sandite and 1977 Charles Page High School graduate, Jadine Cox met her future husband, now City Councilman Phil Nollan, at Oklahoma State University. The two have been married for 37 years and have three kids, two granddaughters, and a cat. Each of their children attended Sand Springs Public Schools.

“This is a job that will take as much as you will give it,” says Nollan, who is a full time representative with no private sector career. “I try to be really devoted, I do a lot of research. I try to be in the community.”  Before running for State office she was the director at Sand Springs Community Services, assisting the low-income community with clothing, school supplies, and food. She also served multiple terms as the Sand Springs Board of Education President.

Nollan is the chairwoman for the Higher Education and Career Tech committee and also serves on the Appropriations and Budget Education committee, the Children, Youth, and Family Services committee, and the Common Education committee.

“One thing I learned during the teacher walkout after talking to teachers from all over our state is there are still a lot of issues we need to look at and try to improve in their situations. I do think that we need to continue to discuss how we can make our school systems strong,” says Nollan.

“Our school districts are the ones that actually develop a strong workforce. We have to have a strong workforce in order to have strong businesses. We have to have strong businesses in order to have a strong economy.”

Keeping with that mission, Nollan authored House Bill 2155 which passed both chambers and was signed into law by Governor Mary Fallin in May of 2017. The bill required the State Board of Education to adopt a statewide system of college and career planning tools that would help parents, counselors, and teachers to develop an individualized career-based learning plan for students. 

“One goal I have and would like to see take place is making a very clear pathway for our students to be able to earn an Associate’s degree by the time they finish high school. Our biggest workforce needs right now are Associate’s degrees and career-tech certifications. So I’d really like to see us focus on that.”

She also authored HB3220 which will help streamline the process of approving emergency certifications for teachers during the current statewide teacher shortage. That bill was signed into law in May of 2018.

HB3225 is another bill Nollan is excited about authoring. “When I was elected I found out we had millions of dollars in tax credits that the State was paying, but we weren’t tracking them at all.”

The Legislature created the Incentive Evaluation Commission in 2015, but HB3225 takes it a step further and will put all State incentives online for anyone to view them.

“The State has these blank checks that they’re writing for these incentives, but we don’t understand how they’re growing. I had this idea that kind of snowballed into a real time dashboard concept for tax credits that would measure and monitor the growth of them. What the bill does, is it directs the Oklahoma Tax Commission to develop a real-time dashboard and put it on their website. That way, with the constant turnover in the legislative body, it would allow them to have a resource for future legislators to be able to determine how those are growing.”

The bill garnered bipartisan support and passed the Senate unanimously before being signed into law this May. The OTC has until January of 2020 to develop and launch the program.

Nollan says she supports the will of the people regarding State Question 788 legalizing medical marijuana, but says the Legislature will have to work to create a strong framework for the industry. She is concerned with how the state workforce might be affected should voters ever push to legalize recreational marijuana.

Minimum wage should remain at its current level, according to Nollan. “Of course you want people to be able to survive, but I also think that businesses need to be able to determine those rates so it doesn’t put the business in jeopardy.”

Nollan also wants to provide context surrounding a controversial attempt by House Democrats to end the Capital Gains tax deduction during the latest session.

Senate Bill 1086 passed 30 votes to 9, but according to Nollan there was an agreement in the House that Republican leadership would vote to increase the Gross Production Tax on new oil wells if Democrats agreed not to push for Capital Gains. After HB1010xx passed, raising GPT from 2% to 5%, Democrats then attempted to suspend House rules to vote on SB1086.

Nollan says she would be open to considering SB1086, but because House leadership didn’t expect it to go to the floor, the bill never went through the standard process of committee review. “The unintended consequences had not been vetted or researched,” says Nollan. She says the House never takes bills straight from the Senate and votes on them without going through committee first.

Nollan wants to remind voters of all the progress that the Legislature has already made in the past few years, especially HB1023xx which raised Oklahoma teacher pay to second in the region with an average increase of $6,100. The Fiscal Year 2019 education budget, which already passed the legislature, includes a 19% increase in education funding with allocations for textbooks and support staff raises.

She also points to the Energy Stabilization Fund created in 2016, which banks energy revenue during boom years to help stabilize the budget during oil busts.

“67% of our legislative body after this cycle will have less than two years’ experience. There’s some issues with regard to institutional memory. It’s such a huge learning curve whenever you first start: understanding the process and understanding such a wide variety of issues that our state has to deal with.”

“That’s something that I think is noteworthy,” says Nollan. “It does put a lot of power into the hands of the lobbyists, the agency heads, the bureaucrats, when there’s such a large turnover in the legislative body.”

Nollan holds an “A” rating from the Research Institute for Economic Development, a 100% rating from the National Federation of Independent Business, an apple from the Oklahomans for Public Education group, a 100% rating from Oklahomans for Life and the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, and “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association and the Oklahoma Second Amendment Association. She has endorsements from U.S. Senator James Lankford, the Tulsa Regional Chamber, and the Oklahoma State Chamber.

The Republican Primary will be held on Tuesday, June 26th. Nollan will face Emily Delozier and Sand Springs City Councilman Brian Jackson. If no candidate receives at least 50% of the votes, then the top two candidates will advance to a runoff election on August 28th. The winner will face the Democratic nominee on November 6th.