There were over two dozen immigration bills introduced this session.  Neither of the ‘English only’ bills, HB 2083 and SB 905, intended as implementing legislation for State Question 751, were approved by the legislature.  On our blog, we advised against passage and pointed out that the bills would have imposed new and draconian restrictions on speech and potentially entangled state officials in a legal double bind.  We also blogged about two bills, SB 683 and HB 1446, that sought to rescind resident tuition eligibility for undocumented high school students enrolling in public colleges and universities.  The stand alone bill, SB 683, died in House committee and the sections pertaining to resident tuition eligibility were removed from HB 1446 in conference committee.  We have blogged extensively about other sections of HB 1446, the omnibus immigration legislation which went through several incarnations and was eventually defeated on the House floor by a vote of 62 (N) to 31 (Y).

SB 971, a bill that would have created the “Oklahoma Health Insurance Private Enterprise Network” and established an online marketplace for health insurance is dead for the session.  Online marketplaces are a requirement of federal health care reform, and we’ve blogged about why SB 971 fell well short of compliance with the Affordable Care Act.  Leadership announced the shelving of SB 971 and the creation of a special joint committee on health care reform and to review the requirements of the new law during the interim and consider what action to take next session.

In this session’s hall of shame, SB 709, which was originally a senior nutrition bill, was amended to target Planned Parenthood by prohibiting third party contractors from partnering with the state to distribute WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) benefits.  WIC subsidizes nutritious food and infant formula for low-income families.  As we reported on our blog, the functional effect of the amendment was to ban non-profits and faith-based organizations in Tulsa and Oklahoma county from administering WIC nutrition benefits to thousands of women and children.  After conferees could not agree on SB 709, the bill was entirely rewritten to address attorney fees for state agencies, but was never reported out of committee.

Neither of the bills aimed at putting more money directly into Oklahoma classrooms by reducing administrative costs will become law this session.  HB 1493, requiring that 70 percent of district funds go directly into classroom instruction, died in committee.  HB 1746, requiring that 65 percent be spent on instruction, faced procedural roadblocks and failed on the House floor without a vote.  We blogged about why these formulaic approaches to education reform are flawed.

The governor asked for legislation this session authorizing a ‘Quick Action Closing Fund’ and lawmakers delivered with HB 1953.  We blogged about such a fund’s lackluster history in Oklahoma and its mixed record in Texas.  Before passing both chambers by a wide margin, the bill was successfully amended by its Senate coauthor John Sparks to require that companies not be involved in independent expenditures intended for political purposes for a specified period before and after the acceptance of an award from the fund.  Although the fund is now established, no money was put into it this session, and where the money will eventually come from remains unclear.

The state left millions of dollars in extended benefits for unemployed state residents on the table.  As we blogged about here, Oklahoma was one of 9 states eligible for $101 million dollars in unemployment benefits for some 29,000 long-term unemployed Oklahomans, money that could have been injected directly into the local economy.  The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission (OESC), the state agency that administers the Unemployment Insurance program, officially declined to comment, and the legislature took no action to enable workers to qualify for the additional help.  Epic fail.

We blogged about SB 622, a bill to change how some prominent state officials get their jobs, shortly after it narrowly passed the Senate in March.  The bill proposed changing the State Treasurer, Labor Commissioner, Insurance Commissioner, State Superintendent, and the three-member Corporation Commission into appointed rather than elected offices.  Such a move is not necessarily undemocratic, especially given the very low levels of information the average voter has about down ballot candidates for statewide office.  But for now, the offices will still be elected by the people, as SB 622 never made it out of the House Rules Committee for a hearing on the House floor.

SB 517 proposed sunsetting twenty tax credits, including the Sales Tax Relief Credit, which provides $40 in tax relief to more than one million low- and medium-income Oklahomans.  Poor families already pay a larger share of their income in taxes than the wealthy, and the sales tax on groceries in particular has a disproportionate affect on low-income Oklahomans.  SB 517 passed the Senate unanimously with its title stricken but was not brought up for consideration on the House floor.

The legislature passed HJR 1002 to reduce annual property tax assessments from 5 percent to 3 percent.  As OK Policy wrote about in detail, before the measure passed, Oklahoma already has one of the lowest property tax rates in the nation.  Revenues lost because of lowering the cap will further squeeze local governments and school districts.  Property taxes in Oklahoma subsidize public school textbooks and supplies, public safety and criminal justice, and career technology centers.  HJR 1002 becomes law if a majority of voters statewide approve the ballot measure in 2012. The other property tax measure we explored, HJR 1001, that would have extended the valuation freeze to all seniors regardless of income passed the House but failed to get a hearing in the Senate.

Remember our post on some of the more singular subject matter that deserved a spot on the 53rd legislative highlight reel?  ’Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ was officially and unanimously named the state’s official gospel song.  Senator Kim David’s SB 237, to classify Jimson weed as a controlled dangerous substance, was approved by the Senate, but never scheduled for a vote on the House floor.  Better luck next session.  Recreational use of Datura Stramonium (AKA Jimson weed) can cause hallucinations, psychosis, violent delirium, and death.  Finally, HB 1320, a bill to apply the same laws to henna tattoos as apply to permanent tattoos or body piercing, was never heard in committee.

Tune-in next session for another packed roster of bills, ranging from the crucially important to the frivolously inane.

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“There’s no excuse for states to let 100 percent federally funded jobless support just die on the vine,” said Christine Owens, Executive Director of the National Employment Law Project. ”This is a no-brainer for states to help their workers, businesses and economies.”

The no-brainer Owens refers to is an unemployment insurance extension known as Extended Benefits approved by Congress and waiting to be used by states.

Oklahoma is one of 9 qualifying states – along with Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Utah and Wyoming —that has not taken advantage of the Extended Benefits provision that NELP estimates would provide 13 additional weeks of assistance for over 29,000 long-term unemployed Oklahomans and inject $101 million in federally-funded benefits to help support Oklahoma families and businesses.

A defining feature of the Great Recession has been the large number of people who have been out of  work for very long stretches through no fault of their own. The national unemployment rate has now been above 6.5 percent since October 2008, while Oklahoma’s unemployment rate has topped 6.5 percent since May 2009.  As the Economist noted in December:

For much of this population, weekly Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits have been the thin net keeping them and their families from plunging into full financial chaos.

The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission, the state agency that administers the UI program, officially declined to comment on this subject but has so far not pushed for legislation that would allow Oklahoma to qualify for Extended Benefits. The Legislature could still take action this session to ensure that workers who are exhausting benefits without finding new jobs will qualify for the additional help. Even if, as hoped and expected, job growth picks up over the coming year, high levels of unemployment are likely to persist for the foreseeable future in Oklahoma and across the nation. Making Unemployment Insurance benefits available to the long-term jobless population for an additional 13 weeks is the right thing for Oklahoma to do.

Update:  For an update on these Unemployment Insurance benefits, see Where Are They Now? Bills we kept our eye on

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This chart created by the Center presents the story succinctly:

What we see is that over the past three years, federal assistance to the states provided through the 2009 stimulus bill, or Recovery Act, made up for over 50 percent of total state shortfalls.  The states were left to address the remaining shortfall through a combination of reserve funds, budget cuts, and revenue increases. In FY ’12, the total shortfall is projected to narrow from $160 billion to $140 billion as state revenues recover. However, with most Recovery Act funds already allocated, the states’ remaining budget gap after federal assistance is projected to increase to a peak  level of $134 billion.

The national pattern is likely to hold in Oklahoma. As we’ve discussed in this briefing memo and this fact sheet, Oklahoma’s General Revenue collections fell by over 20 percent during the recession. The state used almost $1.4 billion in Recovery Act funds, along with $600 million from the Rainy Day Fund, and other non-recurring revenues, to mitigate the severity of budget shortfalls and cuts over the past two budget years and avoid the most extreme doomsday scenarios. Now, even though revenues are beginning to recover, this growth is modest: FY ’11 year-to-date collections remain 24.0 percent below the pre-downturn levels of FY ’09. Although we do not yet have official projections for FY ’12, it appears certain that revenue growth will be nowhere near adequate to make up for the loss of Recovery Act and Rainy Day Fund dollars (OK Policy is preparing forecasts we will release in early December and the initial official state projection will be certified in late December).  In addition, next year’s revenues are likely be impacted by deferred cuts to the top income tax rate that are expected to be triggered in 2012.

By all accounts, the chance of another round of state assistance coming from Washington during the next Congress is essentially nil. In fact, while Congress until now has helped ease the severity of state deficits, there is a real chance that Congressional actions being considered over the coming months will shift more costs to states and exacerbate states’ budget shortfalls. Some proposals that could have a harmful fiscal impact for states include:

• The Obama Administration is proposing a new tax break to encourage investment that would allow businesses to immediately deduct from their gross income the entire cost of capital investments in machinery and equipment — a practice known as “expensing”. The Center on Budget notes that “because of linkages between the federal and state tax codes, this proposal would cost state governments significant amounts of revenue.” For Oklahoma, the lost revenue is projected to be $187 million over the next two fiscal years. States could, however, decouple from this federal provision to avoid taking this big revenue hit.
• House Republican leaders have proposed tackling the deficit by cutting non-security discretionary spending by more than 20 percent in fiscal year 2011. The Center calculates that this proposal could reduce federal funding for programs operated by state and local governments by $32 billion, which for Oklahoma would translate to a loss of $382 million in funding for state and local programs.
• The potential end of the federal program providing extended Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits to the long-term unemployed, which is now set to expire November 30th, would also have an impact on state budgets. Without UI benefits, more unemployed workers and their families would turn to the state-funded Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and other sources of state support and assistance.

Hopefully, state governments and advocates will be able to avert Congress from making the states’ budget situations worse. But without any real hope of another lifeline from Washington, the prospects for next year’s budget have never looked more daunting.

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For many of these jobless workers and their families, weekly Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits provide an essential safety net allowing them to recoup a portion of their lost income – about $290 per week on average – and  pay the bills without additional public support or a full-blown financial emergency. As in past national recessions, Congress has responded to high levels of unemployment by approving federally-funded extensions of UI benefits that go beyond the basic 26 weeks of state-funded benefits. Under the main temporary program of federal jobless benefits, called Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC),  qualified unemployed workers who are actively seeking work receive an additional 34 to 53 weeks of UI benefits, depending on the state’s unemployment rate. NELP reports that so far, in 2010 alone, nearly 9.5 million workers collected federally funded benefits, contributing an estimated $68 billion to the nation’s economy.

However, unless the returning Congress takes action soon, temporary federal UI benefits are set to expire on November 30th. The expiration of benefits would affect unemployed workers in two ways: those currently receiving federal benefits would be cut off as soon as they reach the end of their current benefit tier, and those reaching the end of their 26 weeks of basic state benefits would become ineligible for an extension. NELP calculates that in Oklahoma, 7,590 long-term unemployed workers will be affected in December by the termination of federal benefits: 4,060 who will lose EUC benefits they are currently receiving and an additional 3,533 who are expected to reach the end of their state benefits at the 26-week cut-off.

The National Employment Law Project points out that allowing cutting off extended UI benefits with unemployment at such high levels would be unprecedented:

Never in the history of the program have unemployment benefits been eliminated, or even reduced, when unemployment rates were so high. The only other time in the past 60 years that the unemployment rate has remained so high for so long was during the early 1980s. At that time, Congress did not cut federal unemployment benefits until the national unemployment rate had fallen to 7.2 percent—a far cry from our current rate of 9.6 percent.

The impact of losing benefits would be felt over the coming holidays not only by workers and their families but by the retail sales industry, grocery stores, utility companies, lenders, and others in the private sector whose customers would be even more severely pinched. The overall loss to the economy would be approximately $6.8 billion each month.  And as more people lose federal benefits, the impact would be felt both by community-based safety net providers and by our financially-squeezed state government, as more of the unemployed turn to TANF cash assistance, Medicaid, and other state-supported services.

The outgoing Congress has only a few days left  in session in which to approve an extension of UI benefits before the program expires. Preventing increased hardship for thousands of Oklahoma families who are struggling with long-term joblessness should be the very top priority for Oklahoma’s Congressional delegation in the days ahead.

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About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.

Nationally, 18 percent of food stamp recipients in states surveyed by the Times listed cash income of zero. In Oklahoma, according to data provided me by the Department of Human Services, 48,730 food stamp households reported zero income in June 2009. This is just under one in four – 23.4 percent – of all food stamp households. Of those non-income households, there was an almost equal mixture of households with children (47 percent) and without children (53 percent). Just under 100,000 people lived in these households in June, or about one in 37 Oklahomans.

As we have discussed previously on this blog and in our monthly Numbers You Need bulletin, Oklahoma, like other states, has seen major, sustained growth in its food stamp caseload. The number of food stamp recipients, which was an early indicator of worsening economic times in Oklahoma, has now risen for 20 consecutive months and has surpassed 550,000 people, or one in seven Oklahomans. To some extent, the growing number and share of food stamp households without income reflects the program’s success in reaching and serving those in distress. In particular, recent changes in program eligibility now allow for more childless adults to receive benefits. This population is frequently ineligible for other safety net and work support programs which are restricted to parents of dependent children.

But as the Times notes, this substantial zero-income population points to gaping hopes in the social safety net, especially when it comes to providing income support to those without work. Welfare reform in the 1990′s  did not just “end welfare as we know it”; to a large extent, it ended welfare, period. Oklahoma’s Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program has expanded somewhat in recent months but still only serves some 10,000 families and less than 5,000 single parents (the remaining cases are “child-only”). By comparison, 15 years ago, in 1995, some 45,000 families received monthly cash assistance payments, almost all of which included a working-age parent.  As we noted last May, only 29 percent of unemployed Oklahomans receive Unemployment Insurance benefits.

DHS has been able to compile valuable demographic information on the population of food stamp recipients without other income – we know, for example, that about three in five iare White, one in five Black, one in eight American Indian, and one in twenty Hispanic. We know that men slightly outnumber women in zero-income households without children, while there are three times as many men as women in zero-income households with children. But what we know less well and need to understand much better is how all these households are getting by from day to day and month to month, what impact this is having on their physical and psychological health, and when their situations will improve.

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Across the nation, the deep, prolonged economic recession is putting great strains on state Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs. Oklahoma is hardly immune from these challenges, but our problems are less severe than elsewhere. The combination of having entered the recession with our UI program in good fiscal health, the relative mildness of the downturn in Oklahoma, and the Legislature’s willingness to do what needed to be done to get the boost of available federal stimulus dollars should help  allow the state’s UI program to continue to provide a temporary source of income until employment prospects improve.

As everyone knows, the June jobs report was brutal – the nation lost an additional 467,000 jobs, the unemployment rate reached 9.5 percent, and the total number of unemployed Americans hit 14.7 million, an all-time high. State-level figures for June have not yet been released, but May did bring relatively good news for Oklahoma, as the state’s 0.1 percent increase in the unemployment rate (from 6.2 percent to 6.3 percent) was far less severe than in prior months or in the nation as a whole. Still, the state saw its number of unemployed hit 111,700 for the month, an increase of nearly 50,000 compared to a year prior. The unemployment rate has now topped 7.5 percent in 19 counties, led by Hughes County, whose jobless rate reached 10.9 percent in May. The number of Oklahomans claiming Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits rose to just under 50,000 in May, a 208 percent increase compared to May 2008. Almost 10,000 long-term unemployed workers in the state who have already exhausted their initial period of UI eligibility have now become eligible for an additional 13 weeks of benefits.

Such developments are putting enormous stress on state unemployment insurance systems. Every state has an Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund which collects revenues and pays out benefits. When fewer workers are employed, states pay out more in benefits while taking in less in UI tax collections. Yet while Oklahoma’s Trust Fund balance has declined over the past year, we are in a much stronger situation than most states.

According to a study by the National Employment Law Project, the UI Trust Funds in eight states had already reached insolvency by the end of 2008, while another 16 states faced certain or serious risks of insolvency over the course of 2009-10, leaving them dependent on federal loans to continue operating their UI programs. By contrast, Oklahoma entered the downturn with our UI Trust Fund in excellent shape. At the end of 2008, our Trust Fund had reserves equivalent to 51.5 months of average monthly benefits, the third strongest situation in the nation.

At its peak in August 2008, before the first onset of the economic downturn, the balance in Oklahoma’s UI Trust Fund was $863.3 million. At the end of June, it had fallen to $717.0 million, a decline of $145.6 million. The drop in the Trust Fund’s balance would have been much more precipitous but for the injection in June of $75.8 million as part of the federal stimulus package.  Oklahoma became eligible for these new federal dollars as a result of the Legislature having approved some minor reforms to the state’s UI program that make more formerly part-time and low-income workers eligible for benefits (see our Issue Brief on the subject and one from the National Employment Law Project on what other states have done).

The expansion of unemployed benefits to additional laid-off workers during the downturn is not the only advantage of having adopted these reforms. More significantly, perhaps, by propping up the Trust Fund balance, the $76 million in new federal dollars are expected to avert an automatic trigger, known as conditional factors, that would have increased UI taxes on businesses and reduced UI benefits for the unemployed beginning in 2010. Such a situation would have impacted businesses and laid-off workers at precisely the time when they are already facing economic hardships.

There remain chronic weaknesses with the UI program: its benefits levels fall far short of replacing lost income, many people risk exhausting eligibility before finding work, and for various reasons, a majority of the unemployed, including some 60 percent of  unemployed Oklahomans, do not qualify for UI in the first place. However, for Oklahomans who do qualify, the  health of the state’s UI Trust Fund will be one less thing to worry about.

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The Times presents a 50-state table of participation rates in six public benefit programs. Their data shows that Oklahoma is slightly above the national average in the share of eligible individuals receiving food stamp benefits (69 percent compared to 67 percent nationally); the share of eligible households receiving public housing assistance (32 percent compared to 30 percent nationally), and share of uninsured low-income children covered by public health care programs (77 percent compared to 73 percent nationally).

By contrast, we rank in the bottom fifth of states in the following:

• Just 6 percent of poor Oklahomans receive cash assistance, compared to 21 percent nationally. As we noted in a recent blog post ( “What if we threw a recession and no one showed up at the welfare office?”), TANF caseloads continue to decline in Oklahoma even as poverty rates rise, more people are out of work, and caseloads rise nationally;
• Only 29 percent of unemployed Oklahomans receive Unemployment Insurance benefits, compared to the national average of 44 percent. A measure to encourage states to extend UI to more unemployed workers was included in this year’s stimulus bill and is under consideration by the Oklahoma Legislature (see our Issue Brief on the subject);
• Our share of uninsured poor adults covered by public health insurance programs is just 31 percent, ten points below the national average, reflecting Oklahoma’s very stringent Medicaid eligibility limits for non-disabled adults. Extending Medicaid eligibility to include all adults below the poverty level, as we have argued, could assist this vulnerable population.

As the article makes clear, the safety net as a whole is a patchwork of distinct and often conflicting rules and standards which is in great need of comprehensive review and reform. With tough times continuing and state budget cuts on the horizon, simply making sure that more people don’t fall through the net entirely will be a great challenge in the months ahead.

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Read our four page brief or see this guide from the National Employment Law Project on the various provisions of the stimulus bill benefiting unemployed workers.

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