Analysis: Oklahoma’s limited-government ethos, where every new state mandate should raise red flags, Rep. John Pfeiffer (R-Orlando) has delivered a masterclass in regulatory creep. His HB 2166, now signed into law by Gov. Kevin Stitt, doesn’t slash taxes, slash bureaucracy, or slash the size of government. It does the opposite: It rewrites state law to create two official classes of “legal newspapers” qualified to publish the flood of government-mandated public notices that counties, cities, and local entities must run. The result? A fresh layer of state-defined checklists, audits, court petitions, and content quotas that protects the print newspaper industry’s cozy, taxpayer-funded revenue stream while pretending to “modernize” transparency.
This isn’t deregulation. It’s the print paper lobby – led by the Oklahoma Press Association (OPA) – getting exactly what it negotiated for after “years of study and analysis,” as Pfeiffer himself admitted. And Oklahoma taxpayers, already squeezed by local government spending, will foot the bill through higher publishing fees passed on by the very entities required to use these “qualified” outlets.
