Tulsa city councilors moved Wednesday to postpone voting on an ordinance that would expand human rights protections in the city if passed.
The ordinance would have added protections around employment, housing and public accommodations for veterans. It also would have expanded protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Councilors voted 7-2 to table the initiative for the Sept. 10 meeting following concerns that they didn’t have enough time to review the language. Some councilors were also concerned that the federal government may withhold federal dollars if the city were to pass the ordinance.
Councilors Anthony Archie, Carol Bush and Karen Gilbert — councilors who said they needed more time — and sponsoring councilor Laura Bellis will now discuss the ordinance in a working group before the vote.
Bellis didn’t believe Tulsa was at risk of losing federal money.
“In the context of a state that has all 77 counties, you know, red when it comes to our last election — I just don’t believe that we’re that kind of target,” Bellis said.
Bellis also argued the Human Rights Commission workshopped the ordinance before it came to council. Councilors Lori Decter Wright and Jackie Dutton said any further clarifications or specifications could be made after the ordinance was passed.
But with a slim majority of councilors either arguing against the ordinance or asking for more time to review it, Bellis conceded to let her colleagues review through the summer months.
But Bellis also said she has no intention of changing it.
“This is both to colleagues and to constituents related to this — that if what happens through a council working group process is something watered down, that I’ll be back here with basically this exact copy,” said Bellis.
The move to table was followed by intense council discussion, particularly between Decter Wright and councilor Phil Lakin. Decter Wright accused some councilors of using “tactics” like delaying votes on the ordinance to try to make Bellis and others give up their efforts to pass it.
Archie said he’s not interested in “delaying for delaying’s sake.”
“If there was a colleague here or multiple colleagues who have broken that trust and come back (in August) saying ‘Oh, we need more time’ or are dilly dallying, they’re going to have a problem with me,” Archie said.
Bellis said the ordinance was “already the watered-down version” of a package proposed in September 2023 that would have accomplished a similar goal. Councilor Christian Bengel is the lone current councilor who voted against that ordinance.
It was proposed by former City Councilor Crista Patrick, who referenced the original ordinance when speaking in favor of the new ordinance on Wednesday night.
“That is part of the biggest reason why I didn’t seek reelection — not because I didn’t want to serve my people, but because serving beside, sitting beside, people who thought that I was less than, that I deserve less than, broke me,” she said.
Patrick was one of 15 people who spoke in favor of the ordinance before the vote to table. No one signed up to speak against it.
Speaker Sam Robson said he was “legitimately humiliated” that they had to speak in favor of the ordinance.
“This ordinance should have been passed in 1898, the day this city was established,” Robson said. “I wish that I could come up here and plead and just be friendly with you, but that is not the type of mood that I am in today. This is a matter of life or death for my people and many others, and this is a moral issue.”
