Gov. Kevin Stitt 2nd Inauguration Ceremony

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt delivered his 2nd Inaugural Address on Monday on the State Capitol.

Related Story: Gov. Kevin Stitt Inaugurated For 2nd Term

The full transcript from his handle will be discovered beneath.

Thank you, Corbin.

Thank you, Pro Temp Greg Treat, Speaker Charles McCall, and members of the State Legislature.

Thank you, Lt. Governor Matt Pinnell, and congratulations to all statewide elected officers. I look ahead to rolling up my sleeves and dealing with you on the essential duties now we have forward to make Oklahoma a Top Ten state.

Thank you to my pals representing tribal nations right here right this moment.

Thank you, Chief Justice John Kane and Justices of the State Supreme Court.

I need to thank Governor Keating, Governor Henry… for being right here right this moment.

To my stunning spouse Sarah, I wouldn’t be right here right this moment with out you by my facet over the previous 25 years.

To my six kids, Natalie and my new son-in-law, Joseph, and Drew, Kate, Piper, Remington, Houston – I like you and I’m so pleased with every one in all you.

Thank you to my mother and pa, my two brothers and Sarah’s household.

Honored visitors, pals and my fellow Oklahomans, it’s with deep gratitude and because of my heavenly father and with dedication in my coronary heart that I stand once more earlier than you right this moment as governor of the good State of Oklahoma.

For greater than a century, our historical past was marked by booms and busts. The cycle left us depending on a couple of industries and particular pursuits. And it left us with a way of mediocrity, as if we had been compelled to just accept our State was backside of the barrel and restricted.

But Oklahomans proved our individuals are the reply to our biggest challenges. It is why the nation is aware of and respects a time period we coined because the Oklahoma Standard. In our hardest chapters, Oklahomans have proven that compassion and hope for our fellow citizen are what unites and sustains us.

This is the standard that defines our future and potential, and it’s the character of Oklahomans that we should protect and proceed to show to the subsequent technology. 

For many years, we had been stressed. We requested why our State wasn’t rising and securing new alternatives like the remainder of the nation.

We started to see that now we have all the pieces we have to break the cycles of the booms and the busts. With our huge land and ample pure assets, with our folks and work ethic, with our religion in God and with our shared historical past as a State – we may construct a stronger financial system and extra sustainable Oklahoma.  

When I took workplace 4 years in the past, the State was within the throes of one other downturn. We had been rising from year-after-year funds shortfalls and a authorities in disarray from political finger-pointing and shifting blame.

Spending sprees within the good years left us susceptible within the down years.

In brief, authorities was not working and was not producing the guarantees of certainty and stability for the folks of Oklahoma.

As your governor, I forged a imaginative and prescient for a turnaround that will put Oklahoma on a journey to be seen nationwide as a Top Ten state. I mentioned we will be Top Ten in all the pieces we do. My need was easy: to offer Oklahomans the arrogance and perception that, when working collectively, something is feasible. We take second place to no different state!

And pals, I’m proud to say that right this moment the American Dream is alive and effectively proper right here in Oklahoma.

We constructed the biggest financial savings account in Oklahoma’s historical past, turning funds deficits into practically a 4-billion-dollar financial savings account – the muse for a Top Ten future.

We gave academics one other pay increase, bringing our skilled educators to prime within the area in pay and advantages.

We gave our courageous regulation enforcement officers a protracted overdue pay increase and the assist and added assets they should hold our communities secure.

We stood up for and defended those that defend us, backing our veterans and supporting our state’s world-class navy bases.

We made State authorities extra accountable to the taxpayer, ending the State’s historical past of lending our largest companies’ selections to unelected and untouchable bureaucrats. 

We gave folks second probabilities and surrounded them with the assist to succeed.

We doubled our pipeline of latest companies shifting to our State.

Please be part of me in thanking the onerous work and collaboration of my colleagues on this platform who serve with me within the State Capitol.

[pause]

Right away, our Top Ten imaginative and prescient was put to the take a look at.

When we gathered on these steps 4 years in the past, none of us may have imagined a pandemic that will take a look at the core of who we’re as Americans, as Oklahomans, and as neighbors.

We needed to ask ourselves: Would we glance solely to the federal government to save lots of us? Would we merely batten down the hatches and wait out one other bust?

Not this time.

In 2020, Oklahoma didn’t put our Constitution within the attic!

Nor did we put aside the rules of our forefathers who sought to determine a authorities guaranteeing the person’s proper to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The nice American Dream has endured on this state, and now, greater than ever earlier than, folks want to Oklahoma because the place to search out alternative and dwell freely. Oklahoma has grow to be probably the most fascinating states within the nation to dwell, work, and lift a household. In reality, new Census information launched final week now ranks Oklahoma as TOP TEN in states with highest web migration. 

Because when different states shut down; Oklahoma selected freedom and private accountability. We led with each braveness and compassion; and we didn’t give up our residents to groupthink.

Together, we fortified our focus that freedom and equity would ship hope and alternative for all.

It’s this spirit that can proceed to information us and ship the Top Ten outcomes we all know Oklahoma can obtain.

And we are going to proceed our march to the highest!

It will come by constructing:

a robust financial system,

an training system that prepares all kids for fulfillment,

a restricted authorities that’s accountable for generations to come back, and

a tradition that respects and protects every individual’s Constitutional proper to equity, household, and freedom of religion.

When the world was at a standstill and whereas different economies crumbled, our state’s financial system grew.

When different states skilled a setback, Oklahoma found its comeback.

During a pandemic, we reduce taxes for each single Oklahoman and for job creators to maintain companies rising.

That has performed a major position in delivering essentially the most diversified financial system in Oklahoma’s historical past! And we’re going to hold shifting the needle on decreasing taxes over the subsequent 4 years and getting authorities out of the best way.

Because in Oklahoma, we acknowledge that the federal government doesn’t create jobs! Government’s position is to make sure a degree taking part in area for everybody to compete. No matter your present financial standing, race, ethnicity, or background, we would like everybody to have the identical alternative to chase their goals and to make their lives higher right this moment and into the subsequent technology. 

To protect our wholesome financial system, we should additionally put together our subsequent technology.

I’m honored to be internet hosting right this moment these younger folks sitting in entrance of me.

Please assist me welcome college students from the unbelievable faculties of Broken Arrow, Dove, Santa Fe Charter, Oolagah Talala, Crossings, and Oklahoma Christian.

To the scholars, and to your dad and mom, I need you to listen to instantly from me… I don’t settle for that Oklahoma’s training system is ranked close to the underside.

I’ll struggle day-after-day for YOU.

Because I do know that Texans usually are not smarter than Oklahomans.

Neither are the folks in Florida, Tennessee, Arizona, or Michigan.

WE are America’s pioneers.

WE are the individuals who fueled this nation’s growth.

WE are the dreamers, the go-getters, the can-doers.

It’s time to unleash our state’s full potential.

It’s time to re-think training in Oklahoma.

It’s time for the robust conversations to handle what’s working and what’s not.

It’s time to show children the way to suppose, not what to suppose.

And which means, we should give college students extra entry to studying strategies that match their distinctive wants. We want MORE faculties – not much less faculties just like the worry mongers claimed once we referred to as for change.

We have examples of this rising all throughout our state, just like the Aviation Academy in Norman which is making ready right this moment’s youth to grow to be pilots and airline mechanics.

Look to Santa Fe South Charter School, who sang for us right this moment. They are addressing a novel want for south Oklahoma City by embracing households the place a toddler might be the one bilingual speaker of their dwelling. Instead of ignoring a toddler’s coronary heart language, Santa Fe South embraces it and teaches kids the way to navigate each languages to their very own private success.

We expanded training freedom for extra college students.

Because we consider each child deserves the very best training potential, no matter his or her financial standing or zip code.

Just one 12 months after we handed the Open Transfer regulation, 1000’s of scholars are taking benefit and might now select to attend a faculty that higher suits their wants, like Charles Page High School in Sand Springs which creates a tailor-made studying plan for each one in all their college students.

Rural college districts like Woodward are partnering with profession techs and thriving.

Parents – we’re going to struggle for you. We are going to problem the established order. And we’re going to escape of the underside and break into Top Ten.

[address the State] Oklahoma, our kids and grandchildren rely upon the alternatives we make right this moment.

We have a accountability to do no matter it takes to offer our kids – not simply the subsequent technology – however TODAY’s kids proper right here in entrance of us – entry to Top Ten training selections.

Education shouldn’t be the one authorities establishment we’re going to maintain accountable for change and measurable outcomes.

We have bureaucrats in Washington DC who suppose the one resolution to enhancing the plight of our fellow Americans is extra authorities.

But authorities shouldn’t be the answer to our issues…

Most of the time, authorities IS the issue!

You re-elected me to make authorities extra restricted and extra accountable to you.

One of the clearest instance of our progress in accountability is the Department of Corrections. Four years in the past, the legislature gave the manager department the flexibility to rent the director to run the company underneath a unified imaginative and prescient.

As a outcome, we closed 4 prisons, safely decreased the variety of inmates by over 5,000; we gave our frontline professionals a much-needed pay increase; and we saved the taxpayer lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. We did this whereas decreasing crime and main the nation within the lowest recidivism charge. 

Across a number of State companies, we’ve pushed for flat budgets, and now we have shrunk the scale of presidency, whereas additionally delivering higher, extra environment friendly providers to the taxpayer.

And there’s extra to do. I consider Oklahomans acknowledged this too.

Because it was you – the voter – who rejected particular pursuits final November that had been combating to cease our Top Ten agenda. You acknowledged that these hidden teams had been combating to protect their monopolies, their management and unfair benefit.

You demanded a pacesetter who’s right here for one goal solely: to serve you, the folks – to serve all 4 million Oklahomans, to make Oklahoma Top Ten.

And I promise that whereas I’m on this position, I’ll work to take care of your belief and put YOU – the taxpayer – first. And I’ll struggle tirelessly to make the federal government do the identical.

Today, I supply one remaining pledge.

Together, we are going to shield our lifestyle in Oklahoma.

We will shield a farmer’s proper to work on their land and lift their livestock.

We will shield an unborn little one’s proper to dwell.

We will shield the non secular liberty for all and everybody’s proper to worship freely.

We will shield dad and mom’ rights to lift and educate their kids with out authorities intervention.

We will shield residents’ proper to talk and suppose freely.

And at all times, at all times… we are going to rise up and defend particular person freedoms over authorities management.

To my colleagues on this platform with me, we’re solely right here for a short time. The time is NOW.

It’s time to maintain shifting ahead with massive concepts and to get them throughout the end line for right this moment’s kids in addition to the subsequent technology. 

I consider that what you dream about, what you consider, and what you’re employed for goes to occur. We are both inexperienced and rising or ripe and rotting.

And Oklahomans voted to continue to grow, to maintain dreaming, and to maintain believing!

In closing, I’d wish to take a second to recall President Abraham Lincoln’s phrases in his second inaugural handle.

The Civil War was days away from coming to an finish. It was a struggle of Americans combating and killing Americans over deeply held beliefs of how this nation would view freedom, equity, and a human life shifting ahead.

Lincoln needed to marketing campaign amid unprecedented division. And in profitable re-election, he referred to as for residents to put aside malice in direction of one another and to increase charity to all, to offer grace to the man American that had grow to be an enemy in struggle and to satisfy the promise of a nation the place each particular person was equal underneath the regulation. 

He referred to as Americans to give attention to this work left to complete – a piece ordained by God – to construct America as a land of freedom for all.

Friends, right this moment I’m asking you to hitch me. Leave Washington DC to its political video games and allow us to focus right here at dwelling the place we’re all Oklahomans.

As our State Constitution’s preamble says, might we invoke the steering of Almighty God, might we shield and proceed the blessing of liberty; might we execute a good authorities; and should we promote well being, happiness and alternative for each citizen.

And Oklahoma: May we be united by what the long run will maintain once we are dedicated to freedom and equity for all.

God bless you and God Bless the good state of Oklahoma.