The Weekly Wonk: March 2nd, 2012

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 the huge variety of critical public structures funded by Oklahoma’s income tax.  We released a statement on the troubling new details inside Governor Fallin’s tax reform proposal.  We also released an animated video evaluating the economic performance of Oklahoma vs. Texas – the state with an income tax is winning.  The video was posted by Reuters and StateImpact OK and re-blogged by OkieBrent and Alternative Tulsa.

We gave you five reasons we shouldn’t be drug-testing welfare applicants.  Guest blogger John Thompson discussed the impact of Oklahoma’s No Child Left Behind waiver on urban schools.  Our work on tax reform proposals appeared in both the Tulsa World and NewsOK.

In The Know, Policy Notes

Numbers of the Day

  • 96, 748 – The number of low-income households in Oklahoma who pay more than half of their monthly income on housing.
  • $158 million – Amount of additional money requested by State Superintendent Janet Barresi to fund common education in 2013.  Gov. Fallin’s budget allocates $0 additional dollars.
  • 6.8 percent – Growth rate of clean energy jobs between 1998 and 2007, compared to 2.4 percent growth for all jobs.
  • $31 – The annual extra premium cost of adding a young adult to an employee’s family plan in Oklahoma.
  • 3rd – Oklahoma’s rank nationally for the number of adults and teens who smoke, 2010

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