Quotes of the Day

“Imagine that you are a parent of two and you’ve just received your monthly paycheck. After you pay your bills to keep your family housed and fed, you have $268.78 left, or just under $3 per person per day until your next paycheck. What will you do if you get a flat tire? What if you have to cover the co-pay on an emergency room visit? While you’re figuring that out, do you know which bills you can pay late without interruption of service or penalty fees?”

-Shawna Mott-Wright, vice president of the Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association, writing about the precarious finances of Oklahoma classroom teachers (Source).

“We’re not a listing ship. We are a sinking ship.”

-Department of Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh,after the state Board of Corrections approved a nearly $1.65 billion budget request – triple this year’s appropriation – for the next state fiscal year, with much of the funds going to updating aging facilities and constructing new ones (Source)

“Oklahomans voted to reclassify certain nonviolent offenses — like simple drug possession and low-level property offenses — as misdemeanors, freeing up tens of millions of dollars a year to reinvest in more drug and mental health treatment. But the story’s ending is not written yet. The real work has just started. Nothing will change if the improvements voters endorsed are not properly implemented and expanded. As exciting as Tuesday’s victory was, successful implementation will be an even bigger lift than succeeding at the polls.”

-Kris Steele, Chairman of Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform, on the passage of SQ 780 and SQ 781 and the coming challenge of implementing the new laws (Source). OK Policy’s fact sheet on the two state questions is available here.

“When new potential employers are raising concerns about our commitment to public education and using it as a reason for not accepting positions here, our local businesses and industries suffer greatly. We all know that perception is reality. Even though we know we have wonderful school districts, with great teachers serving our students every single day, the negative publicity we are receiving now beyond Oklahoma does not help us. It makes the problem even worse.”

-Broken Arrow Chamber of Commerce President Wes Smithwick (Source)

“One young man, a junior in his third year at one of our universities, came to me and said, ‘After I’ve done all this work, if they decide not to renew my DACA, I’ll be out of a degree? Those are the types of kids that are living in fear now.”

-Raul Font, president of the Latino Community Development Agency in Oklahoma City, speaking about immigrant students who were brought to the U.S. as children and have been allowed to stay under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is threatened by President-elect Trump (Source).

“It will give us a stronger voice. If we don’t have the percentages, at least we can bind together as a women’s caucus and really push some of those issues.”

-Rep. Leslie Osborn (R-Mustang), on a bipartisan women’s caucus that she and other female lawmakers plan to form to work on issues like domestic violence, equal pay, substance abuse, and women’s incarceration. Women will hold 19 seats in the Oklahoma Legislature in 2017, down from 22 this year (Source)

“The people of Oklahoma have decided that we can no longer afford to fill our prisons with individuals suffering from addiction. That strategy has been far too costly in dollars and in lives.”

-Gov. Mary Fallin, announcing her intention to continue pursuing criminal justice reform after the success of SQ 780 and SQ 781 (Source)

“I do think that legislative bodies are reactionary and usually get it right once they don’t have any other choice. And so we’ve seen what happened with the state question with the teacher pay raise. It’s going to bounce back to the Legislature to do something about it.”

-Oklahoma State Treasurer Ken Miller (Source)

“I think that there is going to have to be recognition that there has to be new recurring revenue put on the table.”

-Finance Secretary Preston Doerflinger, saying that proposals to provide teacher pay raises in the next legislative session will require increasing revenue collections (Source)

“We celebrated the closings of these large hospitals — we were proud of it, and it was the right thing to do. But what we’ve done is basically replaced it with a system that’s worse. Now it’s incarceration, and there are not mental health professionals treating people and caring for them. It’s correctional officers, being asked to do something they’re not properly trained to do.”

-Mental Health Association Oklahoma CEO Mike Brose, speaking about Oklahoma’s failure to fund community mental health care (Source).