Christmas has come early this year for Oklahoma’s winsome lawmakers and business community.But rather than Santa Claus, it’s Gov. Kevin Stitt, who earlier this year flew in on a sleigh pulled by eight tiny buffalo. He brought with him good tidings of great joy as he trumpeted a decision to postpone a statewide vote on hiking the state’s minimum wage until June 2026.In exchange, I’m certain our leaders left their benevolent gift giver plates of mouthwatering burgers cooked by employees making $7.25 an hour.The question is: Are our lawmakers and business leaders smart enough to recognize a gift buffalo when it kicks them in the face?It remains to be seen if it’s dawned on them that Stitt’s delay has given them two full legislative sessions to have some tough conversations about how to responsibly raise our state’s minimum wage.Hopefully, they’re smart enough to take advantage of it.Because if they’re dumb enough to bury their heads in the sand and pretend this vote isn’t going to happen, they are going to find themselves stuck with an increase anyway.If history is any indication, our lawmakers tend to be the worst judges of what our citizens are going to do when it comes to issue-specific votes. When Medicaid expansion appeared on the ballot, lawmakers were insistent that voters were going to nix it. Medicaid was expanded.Remember medical marijuana? Lawmakers were so convinced that voters wouldn’t legalize it that they refused to even consider putting a preemptive framework in place to govern the industry. We’re all still dealing with the consequences of that idiocy as we play regulatory catchup years after voters approved it.Then there was their effort to create something called public infrastructure districts. That went over like a lead balloon with voters last month. (Maybe it was the wonky-sounding name. Or maybe it was because voters didn’t want one more group levying taxes.)I sense a similar naivete — or perhaps hapless hand wringing — when it comes to the minimum wage initiative.Lawmakers have resisted multiple efforts to boost the minimum wage legislatively over the years, so proponents decided to circumvent lawmakers to force a reckoning on the issue.As it stands right now, it has a good chance of passing.All you need to do is look at the groundswell of support that exploded when proponents began collecting the signatures needed to get the measure known as State Question 832, on a future statewide ...
