Today we released our long-awaited Online Budget Guide, a comprehensive resource exploring how Oklahoma’s state and local government collect and spend money to provide public services. While the Guide is packed full of facts and figures and works as both an introduction for citizens and students and a quick-reference for legislators, public managers, advocates, and reporters, it is about more than basic information. It’s also about some basic concerns we want to share with our fellow Oklahomans. Matt Guillory, OK Policy’s Executive Director, said: Read the rest of this entry »

The House of Representatives Appropriation and Budget Committee recently held hearings on an interim study of State Question 744. State Question 744, also known as the HOPE petition, is an initiative sponsored by the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) that would require the state to fund education at the regional average of per-pupil spending. Reps. Leslie Osborn and Randy McDaniel asked for the interim study to explore the impact of the initiative on the state’s finances. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy (OICA) hosts its annual Fall Forum in Edmond on October 13 and 14. This unique event brings together hundreds of opinion leaders and advocates to identify issues affecting children. Participants work together to help shape OICA’s legislative priorities for the coming session. Topics that will be discussed this year include early childhood care and education, children of incarcerated persons, and many other important issues. Attendees will also have the opportunity to participate in advocacy workshops, hear from four candidates for governor, and see OK Policy’s David Blatt discuss Oklahoma’s changing budget picture.

Early bird registration ends this Friday, October 2 and all registration ends next Tuesday, October 6. For directions, an agenda, and online registration, see OICA’s web site.

From time to time, we will use the OK Policy blog to post submissions we receive from Oklahomans who have interesting perspectives on important policy issues for the state. This submission is from Karin Brandenburg, an Oklahoman who works in the homeland security field and counts seven Oklahoma military families in her family lineage, and Wanda deBruler, an Oklahoman who monitors legislation that affects policy on families. The opinions stated below are not necessarily the opinions of OK Policy, its staff, or its board. This blog is a venue to help promote the discussion of ideas from a variety of different points of view.

A bill that could have a huge impact on 400,000 military families in Oklahoma fell short of passage during the last legislative session but is still under consideration. Anyone concerned with the welfare of Oklahoma families should be paying this issue close attention. Read the rest of this entry »

On October 6, Oklahoma Policy Institute will release its Online Budget Guide. This unique tool for understanding Oklahoma state and local government finances will be valuable both as an introduction for newcomers and as a reference guide for the more well-versed. Because it is online, it’s easier to use than a book. You can read through from “cover to cover” or you can look just at the topics that interest you most. The guide also includes links to sources for more information. We will also update the guide regularly as new data become available. We hope to add new topics based on user feedback and requests. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week we released the September edition of Numbers You Need, our monthly recap of statistics that shape Oklahoma. In addition to bad news for the short run–a higher unemployment rate, more people on public support programs, and the eighth straight month of declining state revenues–there’s bad news for the long run. Enrollment in Oklahoma colleges and universities has been essentially flat over the last five years. Read the rest of this entry »

Burgerville, a small fast-food chain in the Pacific Northwest, has always made a killer fresh blackberry shake. Recently, it also made a shrewd business move: providing health insurance for employees. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on the genesis and results of this new strategy. Read the rest of this entry »

The News on 6 in Tulsa reported last week on Oklahomans who lack health insurance. OK Policy’s David Blatt was featured in the story, available here in both print and video, describing who is likely to be uninsured and explaining how care for the uninsured drives up premium costs for everybody. Read the rest of this entry »

Check out Slate.com’s animated map of the changing job picture over the last three and a half years. If you scroll down to the map and click the green arrow at the lower right, you can watch the job picture change for individual counties on a month-by-month basis. Counties are blue when they’ve gained jobs over the most recent year and red if they’ve lost them. The red circles spreading across the country are pretty dramatic evidence of how deep and broad this recession has been and continues to be. While we should avoid being smug at a time like this, we think most Oklahomans, regardless of their political leanings, will be pleased and grateful to see that we are one of the very few states that look more blue than red.

Our new Stimulus Update looks at the $52 billion in education funding in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA, better known as the stimulus). The education programs, in contrast to most other ARRA funds coming to state and local governments, mainly consist of a two-year increase to existing programs that are heavy on operating, not capital, costs. Some examples are:

• Increased Pell Grants for college students ($93 million so far in Oklahoma);
• More funding for special education, education for schools serving low-income students, and vocational rehabilitation ($276 million in Oklahoma); and
• Expanding Early Head Start programs and serving more children at existing Head Start centers (at least $28 million in Oklahoma). Read the rest of this entry »

This is the second of two blog posts on rural poverty by Mariah Levison, a graduate student in International Affairs at Washington University in St. Louis, based on a presentation that Oklahoma Policy Institute gave last month at McCurtain Memorial Hospital in Idabel. In our initial post, Mariah summarized some of the data and theories on the causes of poverty in McCurtain County. Here she examines the research on amenities based development as a strategy for addressing rural poverty. Read the rest of this entry »

Six months into the federal stimulus program (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA), most of the discussion has centered  on infrastructure projects and the impact on economic recovery and jobs, if any. Today, we’d like to focus on a stimulus program that has the potential to help jump start the economy, and continue paying off years down the road. Read the rest of this entry »