Piatt, Collins lock horns over defibrillator bill

OKLAHOMA CITY — A proposal which encourages public schools to purchase automated defibrillators is being derailed because House Republican leaders are feeling political pressure, the bill’s author claimed this week.

Norman Democrat Rep. Wallace Collins said he’s frustrated because he couldn’t get a hearing for House Bill 1847 — a measure, he says, which would encourage public school districts to make automated external defibrillators available “contingent upon certain funding.”

Collins developed the proposal in 2007. Since then, he said he’s struggled to get the bill heard by the House’s Republican leadership. “What’s crazy to me is here, they won’t hear a defibrillator bill which can help save lives, but they’ve got time to hear gun bills to make sure everyone can carry a gun.”

Collins claimed House Floor Leader Greg Piatt has refused to place the proposal on the House calendar because Collins has spoken publicly about his difficulty getting the bill heard and has encouraged residents in Piatt’s southern Oklahoma district to contact GOP leaders about the bill.

“He’s mad at me,” Collins said. “It’s not about the bill. It’s political, because he’s mad at me.”

But Piatt, an Ardmore Republican, said the issue isn’t with Collins, but his bill.

“I just found out about this bill a week ago last Thursday,” Piatt told The Transcript this week. “I started getting e-mails from Ardmore. I asked our legislative staff to look at it and they said the bill wouldn’t do anyting.”

Piatt said he contacted the House’s Education Committee chairman, Rep. Tad Jones — a Claremore Republican — and Jones, too, said the bill wasn’t heard because it “didn’t do anything.”

“The bill doesn’t change anything,” Piatt said. “That’s exactly the way it is right now. That’s the reason the bill wasn’t heard in the education committee. Why run a bill that doesn’t do anything?”

Collins, Piatt said, has “misrepresented” HB 1874 as “an avenue to fix a problem.”

Collins countered, saying Piatt is particularly sensitive to the issue because a boy from Dickson — a small town near Piatt’s home of Ardmore — died recently after collapsing at a basketball game.

In stories published in Ardmore’s Daily Ardmoreite newspaper, Dickson Superintendent Sherry Howe said 12-year-old Luke Davis — a Dickson Middle School student — died due to “an undiagnosed heart rhythm disorder.”

Davis died in early February.

Ardmore officials said Davis collapsed less than two minutes into a seventh-grade basketball game in February.

“If they had a defibrillator at the time, the little boy might have made it,” Collins said. “It probably would have saved his life and those people down there have taken this (bill) personally.”

Since then, Collins said several media outlets have contacted him about the measure, and the ensuing publicity has put a great deal of political pressure on Piatt. “I’ve been asked about my bill and I’ve answered their questions,” Collins said. “I’ve also referred people to Rep. Piatt and the speaker.”

Piatt acknowledged he was “frustrated” by the e-mails from his district.

“I asked him (Collins) to stop,” Piatt said. “I told him I wanted the e-mails from back in my district stopped. I didn’t have time to respond.”

Piatt said he did contact Luke Davis’ mother and “shared with her that Collins’ bill didn’t do anything.”

“I visited with her and that’s a tough phone call to make, let me tell you,” Piatt said. “That young boy died in February and it’s been a week and a month since he’d passed away. The day I called it was his birthday, it was one of the hardest calls I ever had to make.”

Collins said his focus was getting the bill passed and when asked, he “just responded to questions.”

On several occasions, Collins said he fielded questions from residents across the state about the bill. Collins said he encouraged those residents to contact either Piatt or House Speaker Chris Benge and that has angered Piatt.

“He (Piatt) doesn’t like that,” Collins said. “But I don’t think any of them would admit it.”

Copies of an e-mail obtained by The Transcript show that Collins did tell residents to contact Piatt and House Speaker Chris Benge.

In an e-mail dated March 10, Collins urged Ardmore residents Jamie and Charlotte Rutledge to “call or e-mail Speaker Benge and Floor Leader Piatt.”

“I feel this bill is important and can save lives,” Collins wrote in a reply to the couple.

Like Collins, Piatt said he, too, was frustrated.

“When I talked with him about the bill, he didn’t even know what was in his own bill,” Piatt said. “That’s frustrating. He just doesn’t get it. When Wallace left the House the first time he was in majority. When he came back, he was in a minority. That’s just the way it is. Not everyone gets what they want. You don’t go back and cry and complain. You don’t get everything you want when you are in the minority.”

Collins said he talked with Piatt about the issue again last week, and Piatt said he would not hear the bill because Collins was down in his (Piatt’s) district “stirring things up.”

“He said, ‘one more time and that’s it,’” Collins said. “So he’s mad. I guess I’m naive, I thought we were up here to do the right thing. I thought a bill would stand or fall on its own merits and personality wasn’t part of it. I’m being punished. For two years I’m not getting bills heard for purely political reasons.”

Paitt, however, said he supports the idea and has offered Collins a compromise.

“I told him we should run a House Concurrent Resolution,” Piatt said. “That’s what we need to do to bring awareness to this issue. If he wants to do that, that’s fine with me.”