Recent Articles

Faces of the recession

If  you did not see last Sunday’s Tulsa World, it is well worth checking out their front-page profile of families hit by the economic downturn, titled “Faces of the Recession”. Reporters Ginnie Graham and Mike Averill tell the stories of… Read more [More...]

August budget cuts by agency: not quite across-the-board

As a follow-up to our earlier post about the announced cuts to state agencies resulting from the shortfall in July revenue collections, we have prepared a spreadsheet that shows how much of a cut each agency will receive in dollar… Read more [More...]

Standing Corrected: State prison population growth slows

Last week we released the August edition of our Numbers You Need bulletin. In addition to tracking monthly and quarterly trends in employment, inflation, work support programs. state revenues, and foreclosures, each issue also looks at annual data for one… Read more [More...]

New Revenue Numbers: The long climb back

As you’ve no doubt already heard, the worst fears about state revenue collections in the beginning of the new fiscal year were confirmed yesterday with the release of July General Revenue (GR) collections. The Treasurer’s office announced that July revenues… Read more [More...]

Summer Re-run: Oklahoma is not a poor state – we just continue to play one on TV

Note – Occasionally we plan to re-run blog posts on topical subjects that you may have missed the first time around. Recently, the Annie E. Casey released its annual Kids Count report measuring how states are faring on a range… Read more [More...]

Summer Re-run: Child abuse and neglect numbers moving in right direction

Note – Occasionally we plan to re-run blog posts on topical subjects that you may have missed the first time around. Last week brought word from DHS that the number of confirmed cases of child abuse and neglect in Oklahoma… Read more [More...]

Man, oh, man – The downturn hammers male employment

The Oklahoman recently ran an editorial calling attention to the especially heavy toll that the current recession is having on male workers nationally and here in Oklahoma. A new issue brief from Economic Policy Institute, using data from the Bureau… Read more [More...]

Casual Friday: Sounds like hell and the Oklahoma corrections system are facing similar problems

The New Yorker‘s Shouts & Murmurs humor column recently ran a brilliant piece by Ian Frazier that imagined a colloquium convened by Al Gore to address the problem of global warming… of hell. After presentations by a Samaritan sorcerer of… Read more [More...]

The Art of budget forecasting

We have not yet reached the end of the first month of the new fiscal year but already Treasurer Scott Meacham has publicly predicted that state General Revenue collections will fall far enough short of the forecast to trigger an… Read more [More...]

False choices, sensible balances

Matt Miller, writing for the TPM Book Club on a new book by Justin Fox called The Myth of the Rational Market,  provides a thoughtful reformulation of  the “government vs markets” debate: …we’re too often peddled a phony choice between… Read more [More...]