In a recent column in The Journal Record, law professor Andrew Spiropoulos lauded a proposal which “requires state agencies to publicly report the amount and nature of the federal funding they receive and, most importantly, the conditions they accept in exchange for the money.”

The proposed legislation by Rep. Tom Newell and Sen. Greg Treat “would make it easier for the public and policymakers to find out how much of our state government is funded by Washington and what policies we choose to let them impose on us,” wrote Spiropoulos, who serves at the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at OCPA. “Some of this information is publicly available, but isn’t easy to locate or compile. Much of this information isn’t publicly accessible. Supporters of the bill surmise that agencies agree to implement numerous federal programs that legislators or citizens would not support if they were aware of them.”

OCPA president Michael Carnuccio points to one example. “The unreported, successful push by bureaucrats several years ago to participate in an expansion of family planning services has resulted in Oklahoma taxpayers now having to fund the morning-after pill in the Medicaid program,” Carnuccio wrote in The Journal Record.

Spiropoulos was unimpressed with Gov. Fallin’s explanation for her veto of the transparency bill. “She’s concerned about the onerous burden these reporting requirements will place on agency staff. She says that, if you look hard enough, you can find the spending data elsewhere—but she says nothing about where you would find information on the conditions accompanying the spending. It seems more important to her to avoid burdening bureaucrats than to facilitate regulatory relief for our citizens.”

“When lawmakers come back in February,” Carnuccio wrote in another Journal Record column, “they should stand up for Oklahoma and override the governor’s veto.”