Local Group Believes New Bill Would Cancel Out Voter-Approved State Question

A bill moving through the State House could effectively cancel out State Question 780, which passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote in November.

The new law reduces some drug charges from felonies to misdemeanors and a local group is using their skills to help others better understand what some lawmakers are now proposing.

House Bill 1482 - The 'Keep Oklahoma Children Safe from Illegal Drugs Act of 2017' - was just introduced last month.

It partly undoes what State Question 780 did, increasing the charges for possession on and within 1,000 feet of K-12 schools, colleges, churches, and even outdoor spaces like parks. It also makes it a felony to be in possession in the presence of a child 12-and-under.

If caught in those areas, the fines would be higher, prison time longer, and a person would be charged with a felony - something State Question 780 dropped to a misdemeanor.

11/8/2016 Related Story: Oklahoma Voters Approve Both Criminal Reform Measures

Carlos Moreno with Code for Tulsa said, "It was really an issue of us being confused about what this House Bill was and what it really meant."

Moreno and his all-volunteer group wanted to know how Tulsa would be impacted by House Bill 1482 and make that information easy to access and understand.

"We compiled all these different data sets together," he said. “We put them together on a map just to really see what this bill does.

State sources and user-driven sources were used to build the map.

What they found, they said, was that the bill would pretty much render State Question 780 ineffective.

Moreno hopes people can better understand complicated issues like this, saying Code for Tulsa wants to make more data easy to understand.

"It's your data, it's my data. We all pay for this as taxpayers, and so let's make it easy to use and make it available for everyone," he said.

When the bill got to the House Floor Tuesday many amendments were proposed, the main one, places like parks, churches, colleges and universities would not be locations covered under the law.