Quotes of the Day

“I feel a little bit like I’m out here doing this because my representatives, the Legislature, my governor, they’re not doing the job they’re appointed to do, and that’s to keep the state running and healthy, and that includes good infrastructure and good public education. We’re facing a situation where that’s really in jeopardy, and that means to me they’re not doing their job and that means I have to come out here and — not do their job — but remind them to do it.”

– Timothy Bradford, who has two children in Classen School of Advanced Studies in Oklahoma City and marched with Classen students to the Capitol on Wednesday to protest education funding cuts (Source)

“Oil and gas has a ton of weight, and by darn they wanted their credit. By golly they got their credit.”

-Rep. Mark McCullough, on the horizontal drilling tax credit extension that he opposed in 2014 (Source)

“This whole gathering is to show that just because we are considered children does not mean that our education isn’t valued to us, and it should be valued to everybody else. This is our education, this is everybody’s future.”

-Cassidy Coffey, a junior at U.S. Grant High School in Oklahoma City who organized a student walkout to protest budget cuts to Oklahoma schools (Source)

“Last week, the leadership of the Tulsa Regional Chamber paid a visit to the Tulsa World editorial board. The chamber’s top legislative priority: education funding. That’s not just because it’s where we ought to be spending money, although that’s true, they say. It’s also the investment the state has to make to ensure its future prosperity. And yet, with two weeks to go in the regular legislative session and the better part of a $1.3 billion budget hole still looming over everything, we have no answers from the state Capitol on education funding.”

–Tulsa World Editorial Board

“Educators have not received a pay raise in over a decade. Frankly, this is an insult to teachers by saying you can give up your insurance to get a pay raise. Teachers are smarter than that.”

– Oklahoma Education Association Vice President Katherine Bishop, on a legislative proposal to give teachers a raise by capping their health care benefits (Source)

“I have heard it said that in a crisis like this everybody should do their fair share — they should pay their fair share. But people who do not have a fair share in the first place cannot pay their fair share.”

– Rev. Dr. William Tabbernee, executive director of the Oklahoma Conference of Churches, encouraging legislators to protect broad-based tax credits for low-income Oklahoma families at a press conference on Wednesday. Tabbernee was one of 150 Oklahoma faith leaders who signed a letter urging lawmakers to protect the credits and “not to make decisions that increase poverty or further burden the poor.” (Source)

“I’m not qualified to make a judgement about the efficiency of our state’s spending nor if more cuts are appropriate, but I am embarrassed by the fast growing number of our state’s finest public school teachers that have to take a 2nd or even a third job to make ends meet. . . . In this tumultuous time, the state’s oil and gas industry should ‘step up’ and lead the way in surrendering all tax credits.”

-Mike Cantrell, a leader in the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association and the 2005 Oilman of the Year, urging oil and gas companies to give up their tax credits to ease the state’s budget crisis (Source)

“That could be an important step in moving away from an incremental budget process and moving toward a priorities-based, strategic-based budget process. You may have agencies whose needs are based on population demographics, and those demographics may be changing in one direction for a period of time, and their needs will be greater than a simple 3-percent or 5-percent increase.”

-Russell Evans, executive director of the Oklahoma City University Economic Research and Policy Institute, on a proposal to implement multi-year budget projections (Source)

“If you have to raise taxes to avoid being known as the Legislature that put senior citizens out on the streets, so be it. If you have to cut corporate incentives to avoid being the Legislature that decimated public schools, then do it. This isn’t a year to shake out the couch cushions and see what you can find. You did that last year. It hasn’t worked out too well.”

-Mid-Del Schools Superintendent Rick Cobb, writing on the okeducationtruths blog (Source)

“At this point, I don’t think anyone knows how this will end. I don’t think any of the scripts have a good ending. …We can’t fix all of our problems. Even if the price of oil doubled, there are still major budget challenges. There is no great ending. There is worse and there is catastrophic.”

– OK Policy Executive Director David Blatt, on legislative efforts to find solutions to Oklahoma’s budget crisis (Source)