Proposed Bill Would Create Revolving Fund To Help OKPOP Museum

A bill has passed a Senate committee that would help with funding for the OKPOP museum in downtown Tulsa.

This bill doesn't add new money but creates a fund where the current money could be protected until it's spent.

In the last session, the state legislature approved $18 million for the OKPOP museum, which falls under the Oklahoma Historical Society.

"Doing something new always requires more creativity, more thought, and it requires more money, too," said Oklahoma Historical Society Executive Director Trait Thompson. 

The new proposed bill would create a fund that would set that money aside from the historical society's general fund and would allow them to keep it protected until it can be spent.

"At a certain amount of time, any of our normal revenue that comes to the historical society and is not placed in revolving funds, if you don't spend it, at some point it goes back to the general revenue fund," Thompson said.

Thompson says the historical society must raise a matching $18 million in private funding, and as of right now, they've raised $8 million.

"When people come to the building, when they see the vision we are trying to create here, when they see we are trying to do something completely different, something that hasn't been done before, usually they can buy in on what we're working on," he said.

He hopes the bill will pass because it's not appropriating any new money, just creating a fund.

Thompson says he can't wait to see what they have planned for OKPOP to come to life.

"It's not just, oh, I'm going to learn a little about, say, Reba McEntire or James Marsden or some of our Oklahoma creatives, it is that, but it's so much more, it's what made them successful," he said.

He says the opening of the museum still depends on fundraising; he hopes it's within two years of raising the money needed.