Sen. Rosino to continue representing Mustang in State Senate

By Jacob Sturm
[email protected]

On Nov. 13, Sen. Paul Rosino was sworn in to continue serving Senate District 45 for another
four-year term.

“I love supporting Mustang and South Oklahoma City,” Rosino said. “Just the other day you
heard me say that at the veterans’ event, too. It is just a fun community, it’s a caring
community and having the opportunity to serve and represent the people of South Oklahoma
City and Mustang is really very special.”

Rosino has had a focus on aerospace and aviation programs, with the space port expansion in
the state being something on his mind.

That work is still early, and Rosino couldn’t divulge any more information at this time in that
regard.

Rosino has served as the Health and Human Services Chair for the past five years, but he
currently does not know if that will continue. Sen. Lonnie Paxton took over as Senate Pro
Tempore recently, and his decisions on the chairs and committees have yet to be decided.

“I’ll probably do some work legislatively there maybe, but truthfully I do not know if I will be the
Health and Human Services Chair,” Rosino said. “I have been there for five years, and so
sometimes a change is nice or necessary, but that’s a conversation that the Pro Tempore and I
have not had yet.”

In the past few weeks, Rosino had also attended a round table discussion between Grady
County and Canadian County Superintendents about school safety and protecting children’s
future.

Canadian County district attorney Tommy Humphries was also in attendance.

“What they were trying to do is they’re trying to look at ways to help with school safety in
terms of legislation, and legislatively what can be done to help the administrators protect our
kids,” Rosino said. “That was the main discussion, with some of their ideas and some of our
ideas and some things that we have already thought at the Capitol. For instance, we have had a
three-year program where we gave money for school districts to use for safety, but that was all
one-time money and that’s about to end. So, they just wanted to talk about that and possibly
some pieces of legislation that may be helpful for them to use as tools in their tool box to keep
kids protected.”

One of those discussions was based around the threshold for when students and kids make
threats, and whether that is considered a misdemeanor.

Appropriated bills need to be submitted by Dec. 6, while the middle of January is when the
language for many bills will start to get produced. Legislative session starts the first Monday in
February.