How many bills are filed each year? Who is the Cabinet Secretary of Science and Technology? How much money is there in the Rainy Day Fund? Why does it take so long for a bill to be passed?

As the 2012 Oklahoma Legislative session gets underway, a new, fully-updated publication from Oklahoma Policy Institute will answer these questions and more. Whether you are a veteran legislator, a complete novice to Oklahoma politics, or anyone in between, the 2012 OKLAHOMA LEGISLATIVE PRIMER will provide you invaluable information in a concise, user-friendly format. The Primer has sections on: Read the rest of this entry »

Recently Maj. Gen. Rita Aragon, Oklahoma’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs, suggested that school gyms, playgrounds, and athletic fields should be opened to the public after hours. She argued that these “shared-use agreements” for public facilities would reduce obesity, especially in poor communities that may not have access to private gyms, parks, or safe sidewalks.

Aragon’s idea would be an effective and efficient use of public dollars based on a simple premise: the state identifies a public good and directly provides it. Contrast that with an obesity-fighting idea from a few years ago, when Sen. Mike Mazzei proposed a tax credit to reimburse 20 percent of the cost of health club memberships. This would have been more expensive than simply opening up schools and limited to those who could afford 80 percent of a health club membership. In addition, a substantial part of the credit would be wasted on those who would have joined a health club without it.

Sen. Mazzei’s tax credit was not made law, but it is emblematic of a common problem in public policy. Because we have stigmatized direct government action in many areas, we look for workarounds that are less efficient than if the state just went ahead and provided the service. This creates gaps in both efficiency and accountability.

Another example is how the state has encouraged rehabilitation of historic buildings. Lawmakers decided this was in the public interest, so they created a tax credit. However, because the credits were transferable, recipients sold many of them at 80 or 90 cents on the dollar. The buyers likely had no relationship to the rehabilitation project, so a significant percentage of the money was immediately wasted. Read the rest of this entry »

At the recent Gov 2.0a Conference, the tech-savvy and public-minded came together to discuss ways to bring the latest technology into government.  Gov 2.0 is a term you will likely hear again.  It represents a number of intersecting (and sometimes contradictory) trends involving new technology, public data, and open government.

To its biggest boosters, Gov 2.0 has the potential to revolutionize the relationship between citizens and government. Yet substantial obstacles and disagreements remain.

Traditional open government advocates, most prominently represented in our state by Freedom of Information Oklahoma, approach technology primarily as a way to hold government accountable. For this camp, government data is a window into how public officials are doing their jobs.

In some ways, new technology presents a challenge for this group. Open records and open meeting laws are spottily enforced even in normal circumstances, and increasing digitization of records adds another wrinkle. Read the rest of this entry »

This week the Senate narrowly approved a bill to change how several state officials get their jobs. Under SB622, the State Treasurer, Labor Commissioner, Insurance Commissioner, State Superintendent, and the three-member Corporation Commission would be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate instead of being elected. Statewide elections would still be held for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, State Auditor and Inspector, and Attorney General.

If approved by the House, the measure will go before voters as a state question. The bill does not specify how soon it would go into effect after being approved by voters or what would happen to existing officeholders. It does eliminate term limits for the appointed positions (which were put in place only last year through SQ 747), so governors could choose to appoint officeholders across multiple administrations. Read the rest of this entry »

Joey Senat is Associate Professor in the School of Media and Strategic Communications at Oklahoma State University and a member of the Board of FOI Oklahoma. He maintains the FOI Oklahoma blog where an earlier version of this post appeared.

On paper, Oklahoma’s open government laws purport to ensure and facilitate our inherent right to know and be fully informed about our government so we may intelligently exercise our inherent political power.

But putting our Open Records and Meeting laws into action is too often a frustrating ordeal for Oklahomans, with blatant violations leaving them feeling helpless and angry. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know who chairs the Senate Appropriations committee? Who serves as Governor Fallin’s Secretary of Energy? When the deadline is for passing bills out of their original chamber? How much money there is in the Rainy Day Fund? The answers to these questions – and more! – are now available from OK Policy’s fully updated 2011 Oklahoma Legislative and Budget Process Overview.

If you follow Oklahoma legislative issues, the Overview will serve as a handy, informative reference guide, whether you are a veteran lawmaker or a novice advocate. We can honestly say that our Overview is the only resource that compiles updated 2011 information about such topics as legislative leadership, members of the Executive, and appropriations history in a single place. To take advantage of this unlimited time offer, just go to our website where the Overview can be viewed online or downloaded for the insanely low price of free – although should you wish to make a donation to help us continue to make resources like this available, we would certainly appreciate it.

We hope you find the Overview useful, and we hope you will stay informed and engaged over the course of the upcoming legislative session.

Two years ago this month, the Oklahoman and Tulsa World announced a content-sharing agreement in which each paper would carry some stories created by the other. The papers also said they would “focus on reducing some areas of duplication, such as sending reporters from both The Oklahoman and the Tulsa World to cover routine news events.” With the agreement, the Capitol Bureau staffs of the two papers, which had consisted of six reporters a short time earlier, was pared down to three.

For many observers, this shrinking press pool of the state’s two major dailies marked another key moment in the erosion, and potential disappearance, of state political news coverage. According to a 2009 article in the Oklahoma Gazette (unavailable online), the Capitol press corps, which at its peak in 1977 counted 39 reporters, now numbers in the teens.  Smaller papers have eliminated their Capitol reporter positions, TV news stations (other than OETA) cover the Legislature only intermittently, if at all, and even the Associated Press has cut back its staff.  While a small nucleus of experienced, committed Capitol reporters remain, the ongoing capacity of the media to go beyond rewriting press releases and provide Oklahoma with in-depth, informed reporting on public affairs seemed very much in doubt. Read the rest of this entry »

From time to time, we use the OK Policy blog to post contributions that offer interesting perspectives on important policy issues for the state. Michael Lipsky is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization. An expanded 30th Anniversary edition of Michael’s book, Street Level Bureaucracy, will be published this month. This post originally ran on the Demos blog, ideasactionblog.org

The first week in May was Public Service Recognition Week. Although the week in principle is dedicated to all public service workers, most of the attention went to the civilian federal workers who number two million throughout the country and overseas.

But there are other public service workers who deserve more than passing recognition: the 15 million men and women who work in state, county and municipal governments around the country. Read the rest of this entry »

If, as Judge Louis Brandeis famously stated, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant”, the Oklahoma Legislature seems to be on a bit of a cleaning frenzy. Several bills making their way through the legislative process this session HB 3422, SB 1633 and HB 3253 – would expand the amount of information on public expenditures that is made available online to the public.

The measures all build on the 2007 Taxpayer Transparency Act, authored by Sen. Randy Brogdon, which led to the state’s OpenBooks website. The site makes available data on expenditures by each state agency by year and purpose, including detailed payroll and vendor information. OpenBooks also provides information on individuals and businesses who claimed tax credits against the income tax (see our post on this subject). Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know who chairs the Senate Appropriations committee? When the deadline is for passing bills out of their original chamber? How much money there is in the Rainy Day Fund? The answers to these questions – and more! – are now available from OK Policy’s fully updated 2010 Oklahoma Legislative and Budget Process Overview. If you follow Oklahoma legislative issues, the Overview will serve as a helpful and handy reference guide, whether you are a veteran lawmaker or a novice advocate. To take advantage of this unlimited time offer, just go to our website where the Overview can be viewed online or downloaded for the insanely low price of free – although should you wish to make a donation to help us be able to make resources like this available, you can do that, too.

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.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has developed an interesting interactive demographic map that allows you to examine the makeup of each state’s legislature by ethnicity, gender, age, religion and occupation and compare those figures to national averages. Oklahoma’s most notable, and unfortunate, variation from national demographic patterns is in the gender makeup of our Legislature.  As Jean Warner, who runs the excellent Oklahoma Women’s Network Blog, never tires of reminding us,  Oklahoma ranks behind only South Carolina  in female representation in the Legislature. Only 11 percent of Oklahoma’s 149 members of the House and Senate are women; this is less than half the national average of 24 percent. In Vermont and New Hampshire, over one-third of state legislators are women. (This 2008 American Prospect article by Harold Meyerson provides perceptive insights on the regional variations in female officeholders). Read the rest of this entry »