Quotes of the Day

“Boards of education have cut teachers’ jobs and shortened the school week to four days. Thousands of Oklahomans in need of mental health treatment are ending up in jails and prisons because they can’t get the help they need. Those prisons are dangerously full and dangerously understaffed. Across the board, essential state services are being cut because the state Legislature failed to meet its obligations to the taxpayers. Maybe [Public Safety Commissioner Michael] Thompson should take a page out of the school system’s playbook and only patrol highways six days a week. Or maybe the Legislature should come up with a more realistic state revenue structure.”

-Tulsa World Editorial Board (Source)

“I don’t think they’re going to do anything with it, personally. It’s been eight years, and they haven’t even started. So I don’t have much faith that they’re going to.”

– Sheldon Stauffer, of Kingston, Oklahoma, on the lack of development that followed the sale of 750 acres of Texoma State Park land to a private company that was expected to build restaurants, golf courses, and similar tourist attractions on the land [Source]

“They readily admit, as soon as the oil field jobs come back, I’m out of here.”

– Oklahoma Public Employees Association Policy Director Sean Wallace, after the state Department of Corrections announced that it had hired more than one thousand employees in the last budget year and retained 452 of them, compared to 70 in the year prior (Source). 

“It’s very important to stop the cycle as soon as possible. You don’t want to wait until that offender has committed a felony before treatment begins.”

-Red Rock Diversion Program Coordinator Reaina Harris, who gives mental health screenings to inmates at the Midwest City Jail and provides mental health and substance abuse programs in an effort to avoid escalating criminal behavior (Source)

“In Oklahoma, we were struggling, and I was about $60 (each month) away from qualifying for food stamps. That shouldn’t even be something that I am worried about as a teacher.”

-Beckie Eason, one of several teachers who left Oklahoma public school teaching jobs in recent years for higher salaries in other states or careers (Source)

“The vast majority of the people in jail at any given time aren’t there because of what they did, they’re there because they’re too poor to bond out.”

-Tulsa County Assistant Public Defender Jill Webb. The public defenders’ office is starting a program to allow more of their clients charged with minor crimes to be released from jail for free while they await their next court date (Source).

“The question: How can essential state services meet the demands of a growing population when budgets are declining and costs are rising? The answer: It’s not possible.”

– Arnold Hamilton, editor of The Oklahoma Observer, in his Journal Record column (Source)

“Hopefully, we have hit bottom and the numbers will not go back there. And if that is the case, I think we won’t see the budget gap next year that we saw this year. There may still be one, of course. And it is way too early to try to predict those numbers, but I hope the worse is behind us and the budget has recovered somewhat.”

– State Treasurer Ken Miller, announcing that gross revenue collections for FY 2016, which ended on June 30, were down 7.2 percent ($863 million) from the previous year (Source)

“If Oklahoma City feels more like a big-league town these days, it’s not because it has that big-city sticker of approval, an NBA team—it’s because 125,000 people have arrived since 2000, raising the population by 25 percent, and because the city has invested more than a billion dollars in civic life, tying sports arenas, nightlife districts, and public works together in mega-packages in which voters are likely to see something they like.”

–Slate writer Henry Grabar, on the lasting benefits of Oklahoma City’s public infrastructure investments through the Metropolitan Area Projects plan (Source)

“Candidates ran on a platform pushing the smallest possible government and the lowest possible tax burden. It all sounded so good but soon this platform became an addiction. Like an addiction, all logic was ignored around the importance of education, health and economic opportunity. No matter the damage to our children’s future, and ourselves we pushed for and elected proponents of smaller government and lower taxes.”

-Dr. Gerard Clancy, president-designate of the University of Tulsa (Source)