Thus far, lawmakers have failed to significantly expand educational options, especially for the most vulnerable. Recently legislative leaders announced that for now, no vote would occur by the full House or Senate to implement education savings accounts.

Many of the proponents and opponents of expanding school choice, including by way of ESAs, are obvious. For example, coalitions of parents desperate for more choices for their students, diverse faith-based leaders and The State Chamber of Oklahoma all urged lawmakers to implement ESAs this session.

But a defining story of this legislative session is a powerful opponent of ESAs, the Tulsa Regional Chamber.

Remember the Tulsa Regional Chamber? Its leadership in 2014 participated in a failed attempt to support U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, who was trying to prevent Republicans from gaining the majority in the U.S. Senate. Imagine if some of the leadership of the Tulsa Regional Chamber had succeeded. Sen. Harry Reid would still be the Senate majority leader. Majority Leader Reid likely would be using the “nuclear option” to ramrod through an extremely left-of-center Supreme Court justice nomination to replace Justice Antonin Scalia.

Once again the Tulsa Regional Chamber is in lock-step with the Obama administration. Obama’s administration tried to stifle a very popular school choice program in Louisiana and Washington, D.C. The Tulsa Regional Chamber lobbied against efforts to implement ESAs and is now an accomplice in the death of two bills that would have helped the most vulnerable in Oklahoma.

In fairness, the Tulsa Regional Chamber is consistent. The chamber parrots the funding requests of state agencies, proffers the Medicaid expansion as one of the best economic deals ever offered the state and tries to kill tax relief for all while working for special interest tax breaks. The chamber even tried to cripple the oil and gas industry with exorbitantly high taxes just before the downturn.

Some who have left the Tulsa Regional Chamber or refuse to join will tell you that’s because it has become an echo chamber for policies that benefit the growth of big government, with more and more special interests of government involved in the chamber’s processes.

Sadly, thousands of Oklahoma’s most vulnerable children will lose in part because of the lack of intellectual diversity in the Tulsa Regional Chamber.