The Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training said Tuesday during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Safety and Judiciary that its training track is in desperate need for repair.

CLEET requested $3,809,401 in appropriations for FY2016. In FY2015 they were given $3,554,474.

Director Steven Emmons said their 1.8 mile training track is plagued by deep, hazardous ditches that have formed along the side of the road as a result of soil erosion that is a problem for the area they are located.

A series of state agencies met Tuesday with the Senate Appropriation Subcommittee on General Government and Transportation seeking increases or decreases in their budgets, maintaining their facilities to hiring on additional staff.

The Military Department requested an increase from the $11,868,249 it received in fiscal year 2015 to $15,753,000. The department primarily focused their budget priorities for the new year on maintaining its armories across the state, increasing the facilities’ maintenance budget, and increasing the energy budget.

The Department of Corrections defended its fiscal year 2016 appropriation requests Tuesday during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Safety and the Judiciary budget hearing.

The department is requesting appropriations that would be nearly 18 percent more than what they were given for the current fiscal year.

Director of Communications Terri Watkins said the agency wants to eventually get back to levels of funding it saw six or seven years ago.

The trend in requesting budget increases continued into the second day of budget hearings presented to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services.

All four agencies presenting Tuesday requested significant increases to their fiscal year 2016 budgets.

The Oklahoma State University Medical Authority requested a $4.9 million increase, $4 million of which would be a one-time appropriation to replenish funds for the Rural Residency Expansion Act.

Gay rights supporters say Oklahoma is at the forefront of a wave of anti-gay legislation that is unfairly discriminatory and they plan to launch a campaign in the state to oppose more than a dozen bills introduced for the session that begins next week.

Some measures would give broad authority to businesses and corporations to discriminate against gay people. Others would ensure court clerks would not have to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

Another would allow for so-called conversion therapy to help gay children end "unwanted sexual attraction."

Noted author and death penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean is urging Oklahomans to reconsider the death penalty while the Supreme Court decides whether the state's lethal injection method is constitutional.

The Roman Catholic nun and author of the book "Dead Man Walking" joined a group of death penalty opponents Monday calling on Oklahomans to consider joining the 18 states that have abolished it. The group also delivered more than 30,000 online petition signatures to Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin's office.

The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission says the state's unemployment rate declined by two-tenths of a percentage point in December, from 4.4 percent in November to 4.2 percent.

State officials said Tuesday that five of the state's nine seasonally adjusted business sectors added jobs in December. Professional and business services led the way with an over-the-month increase of 2,000 jobs. The construction, educational and health services and government sectors also posted sizeable gains for the month.