Recent Articles

Budget Overview: The rebuilding project continues

Overall, it's best to think of this budget as a second step on what needs to be a long journey. When adjusted for inflation, this budget is still 10.1 percent  below the FY 2009 level. Over half of state agencies still have lower budgets than they did in FY 2009 without accounting for inflation. [More...]

A day without taxes…

I’ve had it. Why can’t we make society work without taxes? I’m willing to try, I think, as I doze off… [More...]

A day without taxes…

In advance of tax day, we’re resharing this post by Paul Shinn, which originally ran on OK Policy’s blog in 2009. I’m not a fan of tax day. Who is? After several tortuous weeks of determining whether I have excess… Read more [More...]

Growing disconnect between budget politics and reality

Last week we reported that next year’s revenues are expected to be 7 percent below their levels of six years ago (FY ’07), even though costs are higher due to inflation, population growth, and increased caseloads Elsewhere, people seem to… Read more [More...]

An Incomplete Recovery–and a chance to do better

Today we published “An Incomplete Recovery: The State Budget Outlook 2012-2015.” This is the third of our annual series of forecasts for the state budget. Our goals for this project are both to inform leaders and citizens about the state’s… Read more [More...]

Fearlessly forecasting–into the past

Once again, OK Policy is getting in touch with its inner dweeb (as if the outer dweeb wasn’t scary enough) and beginning work to develop new four-year forecasts of revenue and budgets for the state of Oklahoma. We’ve written elsewhere… Read more [More...]

New data, old story: Our Online Budget Guide on Oklahoma’s low tax levels

Last year we published OK Policy’s (and possibly the nation’s) first Online Budget Guide, a primer for Oklahoma state and local government finance. We were pretty excited about the online approach. It allowed us to save paper and printing and… Read more [More...]

A different take on poverty

Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, was this month’s speaker at DHS’ Practice and Policy Lecture Series. Haskins looked at causes and offered solutions to the persistence of poverty in the United States. He attributed poverty to four… Read more [More...]

New issue brief: Let's focus on more than "this year's shortfall"

Today OK Policy released “A New Fiscal Reality for Oklahoma: The State Budget Outlook, 2011-2014,” our second annual multi-year budget forecast. Click here for the full 10-page brief or here for the 1-page summary. Dangerously nerdy readers also can check… Read more [More...]

State revenue forecasts: Looking backward

Last year at this time, OK Policy began a revenue forecasting project. Our efforts stemmed from the limitations of official revenue forecasting efforts, which are limited to two annual forecasts prepared for the Board of Equalization, issued in December and… Read more [More...]