An Oklahoma Legislator Wants to Ban Banning?

by John Paul Brammer

And now, more from our ongoing coverage of the farce that Oklahoma has become. State legislators have proposed a bill that would ban local governments from banning oil and gas drilling in their city limits.

The ban-happy state has at last proposed a ban of the one thing we thought they could not ban: banning itself. Oklahoma has opened a wormhole in the baniverse. They’ve created banception.

The bill, proposed by Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives Jeff Hickman, would hand over control of who decides where drilling takes place from local governments to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.

Hickman says he is doing it to protect Oklahoma’s economy, and that the state should be able to tap into any resources within state limits. “Minerals don’t stop under city limit boundaries,” he said.
But Democratic Rep. Cory Williams disagrees, saying the committee was swayed by, you guessed it, oil lobbyists. “There were no less than 30 to 35 oil lobbyists in that room. Our job is to represent the people who aren’t paid to be there and that’s our constituents.”

You would imagine that Oklahoma, which has suffered from a sudden spike in earthquakes that studies show is due to fracking, would see the negative effects that their current drilling policies have created.

Williams says his constituents “should have the ability to limit the intrusion into their lives that oil and gas gets to make.”

The bill has already made it through committee and will be considered by the Oklahoma House of Representatives. If it passes, the Central Oklahoma Clean Water Coalition says they will fight it on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.

Oklahoma has been making national headlines lately for its bizarre bills seeking to ban things that most sensible outsiders would see as totally random, including hoodies, gays, and AP U.S. History classes.

To be clear, as an Oklahoman myself, I know firsthand that there are intelligent, amazing people like Rep. Cory Williams who, like me, are sick of rolling their eyes at their embarrassing government.

Perhaps the only ban that Oklahoma needs is a ban that bans banning.