Quotes of the Day

“The Oklahoma budget illustrates the truth in the saying ‘it’s expensive to be poor’ and why it is so difficult for poor families to build up savings. Poor families can’t build up their savings because they get hit with unavoidable expenses like childcare, medical bills and car maintenance that is necessary to keep their job. Likewise, Oklahoma can’t afford to stop paying the bills in order to save all our money.”

– Colin Douglas, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Center for Progress [NonDoc]

“The majority of senate district 37 is a childcare desert. Most of the spots are full. There are wait lists, and we have a lot of parents that struggle to work because of it.” 

– Sen. Allison Ikley-Freeman (D-Tulsa) [KJRH]

“They specifically told me that they violated their parole because they didn’t have insurance. They were outside, their cancer came back and they couldn’t afford to have it treated…That bothers me a lot that somebody would choose to go back to prison just to get treatment for the cancer they otherwise could not get treatment for.”

– Rep. Cynthia Roe (R-Lindsay) [NonDoc]

“State leaders deserve thanks for directing more support to schools, but I think they also understand we aren’t at the finish line when it comes to ensuring all teachers and all students have the resources and support they need to excel.”

– Shawn Hime, Executive Director of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association [Tulsa World]

“We’ve had two sessions and we’ve gone from cutting to reinvesting. Not enough, but we are reinvesting. How are we going to catch up if we think $1,200 is like ‘yay.’ We have to make sure we don’t get complacent about it.”

– Tulsa Superintendent Deborah Gist, noting that Oklahoma still has work to do in order to get back to the education funding levels of 2008 [Tulsa World]

“I don’t believe we should give up on someone just because they made a mistake. Every time I go into a courtroom or a jail I feel like I’m looking at myself. That could’ve been me. I’ve been broken before and felt like a person who didn’t deserve anything, but people loved me and gave me the chance to live beyond my circumstances. I believe in redemption, and my favorite thing about working for OK Policy is having the opportunity to see it up close.”

– Damion Shade, Criminal Justice Policy Analyst [OK Policy]

“In a state where we have high rates of childhood poverty and we have high rates of childhood ACEs those kids need to get in a system that’s going to attend to their needs and get them the services they need, those educational and social services— and for many kids that system is school.”

– Diane Horn, director of the Early Childhood Education Institute in Tulsa, on why it may be damaging to some kids to raise the start age for kindergarten and pre-K programs [StateImpact]

“…the business of state government isn’t building a bigger reserve. The job is meeting the state’s legitimate needs for basic government service. Until we meet that standard, the governor should keep his desire for more savings in perspective.”

– Tulsa World Editorial Board on Gov. Stitt’s push toward a $2 billion dollar “Rainy Day” fund [Tulsa World]

“The more confident that the community has that their views, feelings, and beliefs are represented, the more willing they are to cooperate. That creates an environment of participation. When you have participation, you tend to not have as many negative interactions.”

– Chris Burbank, of the Center for Policing Equity, explaining why it’s important that a police force reflect the community it serves [Tulsa World]

“Oklahoma has the second highest rate of uninsured in the nation — almost 20 percent of people don’t have insurance. That limits access to care, people don’t go to a doctor, they go to the ER. ERs are there to stabilize a patient and send them on, many patients get prescriptions that they can’t go home and fill because they can’t afford them so they end up back in the ER again.”

– Doug Volinski, Chief Financial Officer of Duncan Regional Hospital, speaking at an event to train signature collectors for SQ 802 [Duncan Banner]