Quotes of the Day

“Corruption must be ended.”

– Rev. Gerald Davis, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration, speaking at a rally in Tulsa on Wednesday. The rally’s organizer called for Sheriff Stanley Glanz to resign, among other demands. (Source)

“They will go [to emergency rooms] or to a federally qualified health care center. The problem is a lack of money – it’s not there. I don’t have an answer.”

– State Rep. Doug Cox (R-Grove), discussing the effects of proposed reductions to the state Medicaid budget, including provider reimbursement cuts on patients. Some providers have said that the cuts could force them to close clinics, leaving many Medicaid patients with access only to costly emergency rooms and underfunded federally qualified health centers. (Source)

“Imagine if you have a classroom full of first graders, where they need to be learning the fundamentals of reading, and yet they don’t have someone there who knows where they started when the year began.”

-State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, who said Oklahoma is losing hundreds of teachers due to low teacher pay and disruptive policies by the Legislature (Source)

“Instead of taking advantage of a healthy economy to address the structural issues in the budget, each year the Oklahoma Legislature continues to pursue short-term solutions to long-term problems. This generationally irresponsible strategy fails to prevent future imbalances while reducing investment in Oklahoma’s future.”

-Nikki Hager, the Midwest regional director of millennial advocacy group Common Sense Action and a previous OK Policy intern (Source)

“I want to help myself. It took jail and almost death to make me realize I have to push through it no matter how hard it gets. I have hope they will find me a place. I have faith that things will work out. I have to. I don’t have an option. I can’t give up again.”

– A 19 year-old Oklahoma girl with severe bipolar disorder who became homeless after her family’s insurance refused to cover the treatment she needed. She has been enrolled in an Oklahoma City-based mental health treatment program, but will likely live in a shelter for several weeks until the program’s housing becomes available. Although the Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies to provide the same level of coverage for physical and mental ailments, advocates say that companies continue to disproportionately deny claims for mental health services (Source)

“It’s encouraging. We are going to make some real headway and these are significant steps.”

– Rep. Cory Williams (D-Stillwater), on Governor Fallin signature of HB 1574, which reduces mandatory minimums for some drug offenders. (Source)

“I don’t like paying taxes any more than you do, but I want to live in a state that takes care of its people. We continue to cut our taxes while year after year of decreases in funding mean that our schools, roads, public safety and agencies that contribute to the quality of life are suffering.”

Ken Fergeson, Chairman of the NBC Oklahoma bank, which was one of more than 90 businesses, non-profits, foundations, and other organizations that joined a letter calling for Oklahoma lawmakers to halt a planned tax cut that’s happening while the state faces a $611 million budget hole (Source)

“I have lived the last 19 years knowing I will die in prison for a nonviolent crime. I saw on the news last night where a man killed two women and their unborn children and will only do 25 years in prison. Where is the justice?”

-Kevin Ott, who was sentenced to life without parole in his early 30s for a nonviolent drug crime under Oklahoma’s harsh three-strikes law (Source)

OSSM’s budget represents less than one-tenth of one percent of our state’s budget. Chopping this minuscule amount any more is not only inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but, to borrow a phrase from more agrarian times, it’s eating our seed corn. OSSM is an incubator that nurtures our state’s most precious human capital.

-Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation President Stephen Prescott, M.D, writing about the Oklahoma School of Science and Math, which has lost 22 percent of its state funding since 2009 as lawmakers are considering even more cuts (Source)

“Those state agencies that serve to safeguard Oklahoma’s children require adequate funding in order to perform their duties. Oklahoma needs to make certain tax regulations and reforms are in place that ensure revenue will not be reduced and a budget that can be balanced. A stand-still budget, much less budget cuts, will not provide Oklahoma with the foundation it needs to build capacity nor to provide strong infrastructure, safe communities and healthy, thriving children. Agency improvement and policy changes are ineffective without a financial commitment by the state of Oklahoma to affect positive change.”

– The opening paragraph of the Oklahoma Child Death Review Board 2015 Recommendations. The Child Death Review Board is a statutorily-created entity within the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth to reduce the number of preventable child deaths. (Source)