Quotes of the Day

“It’s heartbreaking. Sometimes I feel like screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘Help us! Help our kids!’”

-Shawna Mott-Wright, Tulsa Classroom Teacher’s Association vice president, speaking about a new report finding that 30,000 Oklahoma teachers have left the profession in the past 6 years [Source: Tulsa World]

“(The auditors) are saying maybe you need a collection agent to go out there and squeeze the last bit of blood out of that turnip. Yet there’s a constant drumbeat now to perhaps do away with some of those fees. So do you go collect them, or do you let it go?”

-Oklahoma District Attorneys Council executive coordinator Trent Baggett, responding to auditors who called for DAs to hire collections agencies to go after unpaid fees from defendants [Source: Oklahoma Watch]

“The authority also says this new rule will save the state money, yet it offers no estimate of how much money might be saved. Experience would suggest that moving people from Medicaid to uncompensated care will ultimately drive up costs for both taxpayers and patients. If the state is going to risk this possibility, as well as the potential disruption of health care for thousands of Oklahomans, solid financial estimates would seem to be a must-have item for those deciding on the merits of this proposal.”

-Health care advocates Dana Bacon and Kari Rinker, writing about a proposed rule by the Oklahoma Health Care Authority to take SoonerCare away from Oklahomans who have returned mail [Source: Tulsa World]

“The more people protected from the flu, the more we can protect our populations who can’t get the shot.”

-Tulsa City-County Health Department spokeswoman Leanne Stephens, encouraging more Oklahomans to get flu vaccinations after hospitalizations increased 29 percent and two more died from flu [Source: Tulsa World]

“I firmly believe there will be a robust bipartisan criminal justice reform package with the district attorneys buy-in and criminal justice reform advocates buy-in. I think it will be even bigger than what we originally thought.”

-House Majority Leader Jon Echols, R-Oklahoma City [Source: The Frontier]

“It becomes part of your reality to just change your baby’s diaper on a table. We believe in 2019 that more restrooms, especially the men’s rooms, should be equipped with this important amenity.”

-State Rep. Mickey Dollens, who has co-authored a bill authored by Rep. Kelly Albright to require all state, county, and municipal buildings to include at least one changing table that’s accessible to both men and women after discovering that Capitol men’s rooms did not include them. [Source: Muskogee Phoenix]

“For many of our children, that school nurse is the only medical attention or the first medical attention that they will receive. Parents will send them to school even when they’re sick — ‘Go see the nurse as soon as you get there.'”

-Oklahoma City School Board Vice Chair Gloria Torres [Source: Public Radio Tulsa]

By not accepting the return of the taxes we paid to the federal government to cover health care — as 36 states now do, including most Republican states — we are just raising the amount that Oklahomans pay by about $1 billion per year.

-Tulsa businessman George Kaiser, calling on Oklahoma lawmakers to accept federal dollars for Medicaid expansion [Source: Tulsa World]

“We’re at the bottom in funding, but we’re in the middle in terms of our outcomes. You get us to the middle in funding, we’re No. 1 in the nation. We are the No. 1 state in the nation for how we prevent, address, and treat mental illness and addiction.”

-Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Commissioner Terri White, speaking about the agency’s request for a $164 million budget increase next year [Source: Public Radio Tulsa]

“A job interruption of any type, many times, that’s the person that we end up serving, and so it literally can be anyone. You can almost look in the mirror because our SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) clients almost look like everyone else.”

-Oklahoma DHS Adult and Family Services Director Patrick Klein [Source: KOCO]