Quotes of the Day

“The truth of the matter is that, one of the reasons that our [state] budget is so tight is that we spend a disproportionately large amount of our tax revenue on locking up our fellow citizens.”

-John Carl, a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Oklahoma [KGOU]

“We are one step closer to ending our state’s crippling teacher shortage. It will take years to rebuild our state’s teaching profession after a decade of eroded funding to public education and classrooms, but today brings much-needed certainty as we move forward. I am extremely optimistic about the future of public education.”

-State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, on news that an anti-tax group is abandoning its effort to repeal the tax increases that are funding Oklahoma teacher raises [Tulsa World]

“We have a child and it’s hard for us to imagine any child, no matter where you’re from and no matter who you are, to be separated. It’s wrong. It’s not about politics at this point. It’s about basic human decency.”

-Elizabeth Scully, attending an Oklahoma City protest of the Trump administration’s immigration policies with her husband and 18-month-old son [NewsOK].

“Oklahoma should stop the push to deny health care to parents if they don’t work a certain number of hours each week and complete strict reporting requirements. Whole families suffer when a parent loses health care — and when that parent is struggling with mental illness or a chronic disease, it can cascade into deep poverty or losing kids to foster care.”

-Oklahoma Policy Institute Director of Strategy and Communications Gene Perry, in an op-ed in The Oklahoman [NewsOK].

“It’s the opposite of the way it has been, when legislators expected to pay for it in votes if they supported a tax increase. Now they’re paying for it in votes for having been against a tax increase. That is pretty dramatic for Oklahoma.”

-Oklahoma Policy Institute Executive Director David Blatt [New Yorker]

“More total votes were cast in today’s Primary/State Question than were cast in the 2014 GENERAL Election. And votes are still coming in.”

-Oklahoma State Election Board [Twitter]

“I get a lot of questions like ‘Are you married?’, ‘Do you have children?’, ‘You look too young.’ ‘You look like a teenager.’ … I don’t want to ever be rude, but I also want to make these men aware that the way they’re treating me is not acceptable. If we want more women in public office, we need to start treating them equally and fairly.”

-Carrie Blumert, a candidate for Oklahoma County commissioner [NewsOK]

“Registration has gone up in the last five months by more than double the number it increased during the same period in 2014, with a net increase of more than 32,000 additional voters on the rolls since January of this year. We also had nearly 800 candidates file for office this year, which shattered the previous recent record for the most candidates to file in a year, 594, in 2006. All of these numbers are very encouraging, and we are hopeful we will see better turnout at the polls compared to four years ago.”

-Oklahoma Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax [Tulsa World]

“With three-quarters of people headed to our state prisons being admitted for nonviolent offenses and truly not receiving rehabilitation while incarcerated, the Department of Corrections appears to be more the Department of Warehousing. This is no place for people with nonviolent offenses who are impacted by mental illness, homelessness, addiction, lifetimes of trauma and are living in poverty.”

-Melissa Baldwin, director of criminal justice reform for Mental Health Association Oklahoma [Tulsa World]

“If my family would have chosen to seek asylum instead of doing it the way we did, now we would be in detention. We would be in one of those centers. It makes it terrifying to quote-unquote ‘do it the legal way’ and go to the border and ask for asylum.”

-Dream Act Oklahoma-Tulsa President Rosa Hernandez, who was brought to the U.S. as a 4-year-old, speaking about President Trump’s policy of separating and detaining families who apply for asylum to escape persecution in their home countries [Tulsa World].