Oklahoma lawmakers approve health care requests for ARPA funds
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (KOKH) — Oklahoma's lawmakers met in special session on Tuesday to divvy up the American Rescue Plan Act funds (ARPA).
While the state legislature is looking to address the most pressing needs, Senator James Lankford is calling for transparency over the process.
There's around 1,400 projects from a range of different industries requesting a piece of the funding.
Tuesday's discussion revolved around health care.
Lawmakers have been meeting in focus groups with the health care community.
The top priority has become building the nursing pipeline.
The projects that are standing out deal with investments in career tech.
Rep. Kyle Hilbert, (R)-Bristow, said by funding career tech programs, we could add around 1,100 licensed health care workers across the state.
"Last year our nursing programs across the state and Higher Ed rejected 1,500 nursing applicants," Rep. Hilbert said. "So the issue isn't that we don't have enough applicants or we don't have enough workforce, the issue is that we simply don't have enough space to train the students."
Oklahoma's career tech includes a chain of 29 schools and around 60 campuses across the state.
The relief in this package would be around nine million dollars.
Another priority item is improving children's health.
A proposal passed giving a total of $39.4 million to OU Children's for behavior health beds.
The money will go towards completing what will eventually be the state's only facility that could service long term inpatient care for children's behavior health.
"If we're going to see anything long term from the pandemic, it's going to be the mental health of the next generation," Rep. Hilbert said. "If we're not strategic in investing and making a difference in this today, we're going to pay the repercussions of it for decades. This is something I'm really passionate about. I'm really excited about seeing this funding get one step closer to moving across the finish line."
Lawmakers are ready to get the dollars out the door.
The proposals will turn into bills that could be voted on as early as the June 13th special session.
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