Quotes of the Day

“Now, therefore, be it resolved that we, the members of the Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education, joining with voices from all sectors and throughout the state, hereby do call on members of the legislature of the State of Oklahoma to immediately pass legislation to return the Gross Production Tax to the historic rate of 7% to be effective for all wells on July 1, 2017 and thereby put us on the path for an adequately funded public education system with the resources to pay our teachers an honorable wage and support the most important of our work as a State: preparing every student for the greatest success in college, careers and life.” 

– Concluding paragraph of a resolution urging the legislature to raise the gross production tax passed by Tulsa Public Schools on May 1, 2017 (Source)

“I know it is a hard vote. I have had to make a lot of hard votes, too. But I am willing to stay here at this Capitol as long as I need to, and if I have to veto the budget because we don’t get our work done and we devastate our state agencies and not fund core mission services our citizens actually demand that we do, then I am willing to veto the budget. I am willing to stay as long as we need to until we get our job done.”

– Gov. Fallin, warning lawmakers that they have just a few weeks left to develop a workable budget at a press conference on Wednesday (Source)

“For years now, the state has been underfunding services that Oklahoma families rely on. Politicians and special-interest groups have succeeded by dividing us. It’s going to take all of us working together to begin righting this ship — everyone from underpaid teachers working in overcrowded classrooms to Highway Patrol troopers limited to 100 miles of driving each day.”

-Let’s Fix This Executive Director Andy Moore and Stand for Children Executive Director Amber England, calling on legislators to pass a budget with significant new investments in services (Source). Read the Blueprint for a Better Budget here.

“We weren’t joking when we put out the 14.5 (percent cut) scenarios. So far … we’ve brought in $50 million. Our budget hole is $1 billion. … We will close regional colleges. … We will never get more dollars into the per pupil formula. We will never have a teacher pay raise. We will lay off 25 percent of our (Highway Patrol) troopers.”

-Rep. Leslie Osborn, on the need to find new revenue sources to fill the budget gap (Source)

“Anyone familiar with the economics of drilling knows that taxes rarely determine where to drill. Most successful companies drill where the oil and natural gas is located — not where tax policy is lenient.”

– Former mayor of Tulsa and president of Keener Oil & Gas Co. Dewey Bartlett arguing for the restoration of the gross production tax to 7% (Source)

“We have to come together with our partners, like this wonderful group of energy partners that has come together with us and said, ‘we set the rate too low. We have to look forward to bringing in new recurring dollars, and there is nothing more important to fund besides those core services than our future. And our future is our children.’”

– House Appropriations and Budget Chair Leslie Osborn (R-Mustang), on the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance’s suggested gross production tax increase (Source)

“Today, we have 62,000 in our system. What bothers me is back in December, we hit a record population of 61,000. It has taken just four months for an additional 1,000 people to be included in our numbers of incarcerated, supervised, and county jail backup.”

– Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh (Source)

“Ultimately we found that there are many serious systemic flaws in Oklahoma’s death penalty process that obviously can and have led to innocent people being convicted and put on death row. If we’re going to have the death penalty, it must be done right to ensure that no innocent person is executed.”

-Former Gov. Brad Henry, announcing the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission’s recommendation to maintain a moratorium on the death penalty and implement more than 40 changes to its process (Source)

“I knocked on 3,500 door steps during the campaign, I didn’t have one person say, ‘go up there and change the gun laws.’ Those conversations weren’t happening. It was constantly over and over and over again: fix the budget, help diversify our economy, and fix education.”

-Rep. Scott Fetgatter (R-Okmulgee) (Source)

“If you’re pinching pennies, this bill helps save money by kicking young kids out of class, reducing their services, and getting the state off-the-hook for paying to educate and counsel them. If, however, you are trying to educate a generation of children to become productive adults, it undermines that goal in almost every way. In fact, in the long term, it will probably also cost the state more money, fueling the ‘school to prison pipeline,’ as children who can’t make it in school turn to antisocial behavior and crime.”

– Joe Dorman speaking about SB 81, a bill that would allow out-of-school suspension for students as young as third grade (Source)