Two bills that would require applicants for TANF benefits to submit to and pay for a drug test, HB 2388 and SB 1073, have cleared their first committees and are moving through the legislative process.  TANF stands for ‘Temporary Assistance for Needy Families’ but the program bears little resemblance to ‘welfare’  as most people imagine it.  Welfare reform in 1996 drastically downsized and radically altered safety net cash assistance programs.  Proponents of the bills argue that: (1) drug users shouldn’t be allowed to access public benefits and (2) that denying benefits through drug testing will save the state money.  Both of these arguments are flawed.  Here are five simple reasons not to drug-test welfare applicants [click here for our fact sheet]:

1. It’s unconstitutional

A Michigan law that is nearly identical to the Oklahoma proposals has already been ruled unconstitutional by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.  The court ruled in 2003 in Marchwinski v. Howard that Michigan’s policy of broadly subjecting all welfare applicants to a drug test violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.  An analysis by the Congressional Research Service concluded in 2008 that state laws requiring drug tests as a condition of benefits, without suspicion of drug use, are susceptible to constitutional challenge.  In fact, this is precisely what just happened to Florida’s new law, which is suspended pending the outcome of a legal challenge. Read the rest of this entry »

The senior vice president and director of the Human Services Research Division of Mathematica Policy Research, Inc will be the final speaker in the spring 2011 OKDHS Policy and Practice Lecture Series.  Barbara Devaney, Ph.D., will present “Oklahoma’s Building Strong Families Project” on Thursday, May 19, from Noon to 1pm at the Oklahoma History Center in the Chesapeake Room. The event is free and open to the public.

Devaney received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.  She is a nationally recognized expert in maternal and child health, nutrition and risk-reduction programs for youth.  She is co-director of Mathematica’s Building Strong Families study and has served as principal investigator for the firm’s evaluation of abstinence education programs, which received the 2009 Outstanding Evaluation Award from the American Evaluation Association.

Devaney has played a leading role in many of Mathematica’s studies of family formation, children’s nutrition and public health programs.  She has served on scientific committees convened by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. She publishes widely in peer-reviewed journals and presents findings at conferences of researchers, policymakers and practitioners.

The Building Strong Families project is an initiative to develop and evaluate programs designed to help interested unwed parents strengthen and stabilize their relationships.

Related information:

• Guest blog post by Scott Stanley on Family Expectation, one component of this initiative in Oklahoma.
• OK Policy roundtable: Should Oklahoma be promoting marriage?

Like most people who watch public budgets, we tend to focus on what is being spent, at the expense of what is being bought. Our upcoming Online Guide to Oklahoma Budget and Taxes looks at state and local expenditures more broadly than the traditional view. For each of six functional areas, the Guide reminds us why we have asked government to take some responsibility and what we hope will result from this collective effort. Then we offer some measures we can use to check progress.

Here are some excerpts from our section on Health and Social Services:

Human, health and social services provide the safety net that is essential to our society. Most Oklahomans agree that government should insure that vulnerable individuals and families can meet their basic needs. It also should promote healthy lifestyles that reduce public and private costs.

Our measures of success in this area suggest we have work to do.

• 15.9 percent of Oklahomans are poor, according to the federal definition, compared to 11 percent nationwide.
• Oklahoma ranked 43rd in overall health in 2007, according to the United Health Foundation.
• 18.7 percent of Oklahomans did not have health insurance in 2006, making Oklahoma 5th highest in uninsured population.

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Federal stimulus money has been in the news nationally and in Oklahoma. It has expanded or stabilized a wide range of public services. The recently-completed state budget for FY’10 used $641 million of stimulus funding to make up for over $600 million in lost state revenue. The stimulus, though, is just part of a significant federal contribution to state and local government services in Oklahoma. In 2007, we received $5.5 billion in total grants.

What does all this federal money do? Our upcoming Online Guide to Oklahoma Budget and Taxes has some answers. The guide is unique among the available sources of information on government finance in Oklahoma. It is broader than any other source, covering both state and local government and describing all sources of revenue and spending, not just taxes and appropriations. Here’s an extract that provides an overview of federal funding and what it helps us accomplish.

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