What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.

This week OK Policy explained what federal budget cuts could mean for Oklahoma.  Doug Hall of the Economic Policy Institute underscored the urgency of fixing America’s crumbling infrastructure.  Our director David Blatt spoke at a StateImpact Oklahoma forum about why proposals to reduce or eliminate the income tax would effectively raise taxes for most Oklahomans.

Also this week, we featured remarks by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley on how health care reform improves business competitiveness.  We posted event information about the first annual Grandparenting Workshop at Oklahoma State University.

Numbers of the Day

• $107 – Average tax increase on sixty percent of Oklahoma households under a legislative proposal to eliminate a slate of broad-based tax credits and exemptions.
• 8,600 – Number of jobs lost in state and local government in Oklahoma over 2010.
• $22,007 – Annual average wage for home health aides in Oklahoma, just below the federal poverty level for a family of four in 2010, $22,050
• 11 percent – Percentage of ex-offenders released in Oklahoma who were re-incarcerated for technical violations of their probation/parole in 2004, up from 3 percent in 1999.
• $34 million – Amount needed to repair sewer lines and make major improvements to two facilities slated for closure that house medically fragile, mentally disabled Oklahoma residents.

In The Know, Policy Notes

• The Center for Economic and Policy Research shares five reasons we should be concerned about the rising share of low-wage work.
• Touchstone examines the austerity curve, or the point at which cutting government spending becomes self-defeating because it lowers growth, depresses tax revenues, and pushes up social security spending by more than the government is cutting.
• The Century Foundation shares a series of graphs that bust the myths about food stamps.
• The Kaiser Family Foundation released their annual survey of employer health benefits, with a detailed look at trends in employer-sponsored health coverage.

Oklahoma Policy Institute is seeking an experienced and effective outreach coordinator to lead the effort to educate Oklahomans about the need to protect our tax base and ensure adequate funding of public services.  A coalition of organizations for fair and sustainable budget and tax policies is emerging.  The outreach coordinator will play a critical role in developing the strategy for this coalition, developing and spreading the coalition’s message, expanding membership, and executing a shared agenda for achieving the coalition’s goals.

The Outreach Coordinator will be a half-time contract position (with the possibility of additional hours) based in Oklahoma City.  Click here for a full description of the position and instructions for how to apply.

Send a resume and cover letter to David Blatt, Director, Oklahoma Policy Institute at jobs@okpolicy.org by Tuesday, January 17, 2012.  Please be sure to note in the subject line of the email, Outreach Coordinator and describe your availability and salary requirements in the letter. 

What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.

This week at OK Policy, we presented interactive charts tracking state agencies’ share of the budget over time.  A series of visualizations show that while revenues have fallen over the past decade and the overall budget pie has shrunk, the distribution of that pie among agencies has remained relatively unchanged (with a couple notable exceptions). Read the rest of this entry »

What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.

This week OK Policy reported on SB 517, a bill that would sunset 20 tax credits, including one relied on by 1 million low- and medium-income Oklahomans.  If Oklahoma eliminates this credit, it would put us in the company of just Mississippi and Alabama as the only states that provide no relief for grocery taxes.  The Tulsa world reported on OK Policy’s ideas for improving the tax code and adequately funding public structures.

We released the April edition of Numbers You Need this week, our monthly bulletin of key economic and budget trends, which shows a slow and steady economic recovery for Oklahoma.  For a closer look at two key indicators of economic improvement, read Tuesday’s blog post, Quick Take on the Economy: Income picks up steam, unemployment edges downward.

Despite the economic recovery and improving revenue collections, the state still faces a huge shortfall for next year.  Yesterday’s blog post explains the “5 percent option” and suggests why we think a portion of this money should be used to make up the shortfall.

On April 29, Oklahoma Assets hosts a Webinar on financial education in public schools.  Yesterday, OK Policy represented Oklahoma Assets at Jump$tart Your Money Day at the State Capitol.

Numbers of the Week

• 6.5 percent – Oklahoma’s unemployment rate, February 2011
• 103 – Drug-free infants born to drug-court participants in Oklahoma, FY07-FY09
• $7,411,299,000 – Annual payroll and receipts of Oklahoma firms with less than 20 employees, 2007
• 9 – Number of states where 30 percent or more of the population is obese, 2009; Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
• $118 million – Potential revenue generated by eliminating the itemized deduction for state tax payments on Oklahoma returns.

Click here for source citations and archived numbers of the day.

In the Know is a daily synopsis of Oklahoma policy-related news and blog posts.  You can sign up here to receive In the Know in your inbox each weekday morning and the Weekly Wonk each Friday afternoon.

Today, Oklahoma Policy Institute released an issue brief exploring State Question 744, the proposal that will appear on the November ballot that would peg Oklahoma’s education spending to the regional average per pupil expenditure in six neighboring states. On our website you can read the full issue brief or a one-page summary; you’ll also find links to the  language of the ballot measure and to the websites of the pro- and anti-SQ 744 coalitions. Here is the press release that we put out explaining why we believe SQ 744 to be the wrong solution for Oklahoma:

State Question 744, the proposed constitutional amendment that would peg the annual education budget in Oklahoma to funding levels in six neighboring states, is the wrong solution to a real problem, according to a new issue brief from Oklahoma Policy Institute.

“We know that education funding in Oklahoma has failed to keep pace,” said David Blatt, OK Policy’s Director and the report’s author. “However, the challenges faced by common education in Oklahoma are shared across the broad spectrum of state government. By mandating huge spending increases for common education without an overall expansion of state revenues, SQ 744 creates the strong likelihood of setting the state further behind in all our other critical areas of public investment, including higher education, health care, human services, and public safety. This outcome would harm all Oklahomans, including our schoolchildren and teachers.” Read the rest of this entry »

The latest edition of our monthly Numbers You Need bulletin reports on the most recent state personal income data that was put out last month by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the 1st quarter of 2010, state personal income grew by a healthy 0.9 percent in both Oklahoma and the nation, showing the strongest rate of growth since the 2nd quarter of 2008. Personal income grew in all but two states (North Dakota and South Dakota), with Mississippi leading the way (+1.6 percent). Oklahoma’s growth for the quarter ranked 28th among the states.

As can be seen in this chart, state personal income remains slightly below pre-downturn levels. Oklahoma’s  state personal income of $131.2 billion in the 1st quarter was 99.2 percent of the amount in the 3rd quarter of 2008 (amounts are seasonally adjusted at annual rates).  While state personal income for the nation as a whole declined more sharply than in Oklahoma during the worst of the recession, it, too, has recovered to just over 99 percent of pre-downturn levels.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some other key findings from May’s edition:

• As the downturn deepens, participation in the Food Stamp program and Medicaid continues to grow, but fewer people are receiving TANF cash assistance benefits (see our blog entry “What if we threw a recession and no one showed up at the welfare office?“);
• The Consumer Price Index grew by a modest 0.3 percent in March in the South region, but was down 0.3 percent over the past 12 months;
• Bankruptcies in Oklahoma were up 23.0 percent in 2008 compared to 2007; and
• 56 percent of Oklahoma public school children were enrolled in the free- and reduced-meal program in 2008-09 (see our blog entry “Feeding the Children” for a full discussion).

Both houses of the Legislature this week passed a resolution, SJR 12,  that would allow this year’s session to adjourn sine die on May 22nd, one week earlier than scheduled. The goal, explained President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee, is to wrap up business before the Memorial Day long weekend rather than return and work through the final week leading up to the constitutionally-mandated adjournment at 5:00 pm on the last Friday of May.

While the hope to get done and get home may be widely shared, there is a countervailing sense that I heard expressed by insiders at the Capitol this week that  negotiating a budget agreement this year is going to be especially long and difficult. Right now, all budget deliberations are on hold while the state awaits additional regulations and instructions from the federal government about the terms and conditions governing the use of federal stimulus act dollars.  The current consensus is that no decisions can be made about how to manage next year’s $600-million drop in available revenue until further instructions are handed down from Washington. The most eagerly-awaited guidance concerns the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, which will provide Oklahoma with $578 million, subject to various restrictions (the U.S. Department of Education has provided some information here). Getting federal guidance, working through the various implications,  and reaching consensus on the appropriate mix of state and federal funds for next year’s budget may take the Legislature not only until the very end of May, but perhaps beyond.