This afternoon at 3:00 marked the first meeting of Governor Henry’s coordinating council to oversee the use of the federal stimulus money available to Oklahoma through ARRA. All of the members of the council were in attendance for this inaugural meeting. Susan Savage will serve as the lead contact for the council. Scott Meachem will work on all aspects of the stimulus package as they relate to the state budget and will work on a daily basis to coordinate with the legislature. Steve Burrage will be the “monitoring guru”.

Governor Henry stated that the goal of the council is to make sure Oklahoma doesn’t fall into any traps and that we get the full benefit of the stimulus funds. He stressed that, although openness and accountability is a key goal of this process, it goes beyond that. The other stated goal is to identify all opportunities where Oklahoma can benefit from the stimulus package.
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Yesterday’s New York Times had a sobering profile of the housing market in Cleveland, which has experienced the post-boom collapse earlier and more deeply than most of the rest of the nation. While the situation in Cleveland, as elsewhere, has many causes and more than enough blame to go around, the piece includes a telling passage about what happened when Cleveland tried to take action against the predatory lenders who took over the subprime lending market in the early 2000′s to make unaffordable loans to homeowners crammed full of high costs and fees. Read the rest of this entry »