Quotes of the Day

“I help process food stamps and other forms of assistance, but there are many workers here who have had to use those same services. When I started working here almost 11 years ago, the pay seemed OK but cost of living goes up and with no raises, it has become a struggle.”

-Cindy Shewmake, speaking about thousands of Oklahoma state employees at DHS, the Department of Corrections and other agencies who are not being paid a living wage (Source).

“It is important that we provide families and communities with something that is easy to understand but is accurate and meaningful. I think we have found that balance today, and now it is time for the Legislature to take that … We hope that we’ll have a system in the future that is going to be an improvement over what has been in place for the last few years.”

– State Superintendent of Schools Joy Hofmeister, speaking after the  State Board of Education approved a proposal for a new A-F school report card system on Thursday (Source)

“If nothing is done to address the systemic drivers of jail overcrowding described in this report, any new facility, regardless of its size, will experience the same problems as the current facility.”

– A finding in a report on overcrowding at the Oklahoma City jail by the Vera Institute and the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber Criminal Justice Reform Task Force (Source). The full report can be found here

“As substance abuse issues touch more families and communities, we need to focus on treatment to help women get on the right path and keep families together. With the work of the task force, we have an opportunity to bring long-needed improvements addressing crimes driven by substance abuse disorders.”

-Jan Peery, CEO of YWCA Oklahoma City, and Dianne Barker Harrold, Indian Country consultant and victim specialist, on the work of the Justice Reform Task Force that will produce proposals to reduce the prison population before the 2017 legislative session (Source)

“Oklahomans tend to be very generous and caring, and there are a number of excellent private programs here. However, at the governmental level, we invest very little in those who are disadvantaged.”

-Susan Sharp, a sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma and co-chairwoman of the state’s Children of Incarcerated Parents Advisory Committee, commenting on the importance of programs that connect children with their incarcerated parents and the lack of public support for those programs (Source)

“It would take about $300 million to fund a $5,000 raise and that’s going to take some form of new revenue. A plan is just rhetoric until it includes an actual way to fund it.”

-Amber England, Executive Director of Stand for Children Oklahoma, who said she has heard lots of support for a teacher pay raise, but not as many details about how to do it (Source).

“Legislators do not just employ a single executive assistant, but more than 30,000 state workers who want them to accept responsibility and be good employers. Oklahoma state workers deserve lawmakers’ respect and support. They deserve a meaningful and significant pay increase in 2017.”

-Sean Wallace, policy director of the Oklahoma Public Employees Association, arguing for pay raises for state employees. Most state employees have gone a decade or more without one (Source)

“Block grant proposals are a threat to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Oklahomans, especially low-income children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities. They would end America’s basic guarantee of access to health care and food for all families and replace it with an inadequate fund vulnerable to the whims of politicians.”

-OK Policy Executive Director David Blatt, writing about House Speaker Paul Ryan’s proposals to radically transform Medicaid and SNAP benefits into fixed pools of money for states instead of entitlements for families (Source).

“Because what do you do when you cut taxes more? You cut spending. You cut education expenditures. Those have immediate, final demand spending effects in the economy. Well, what about all these benefits from low taxes? Well, obviously, it’s not doing very much if you’re lagging in growth.”

-OSU economist Dan Rickman, explaining that deep income tax cuts have hurt Kansas’ economic growth and urging Oklahoma not to continue doing the same. Rickman projects 0.4 percent growth in Oklahoma, compared to 1 percent nationally (Source)

“Now, we’re sending the police out as a front-line mental health team with no training and no resources, and no support backup, and we expect them to do the job. A lot of officers resent the hell out of that. A lot of officers still say this is not a situation we should be handling. And I tell those officers, ‘Bull.’ Our job, square one, is safety and security in the community.”

– Steve Lyons, a retired Houston police officer and a board member for National Alliance of Mental Illness Tulsa, on the role of police as first responders to mental health crises (Source)