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In The Know is a daily synopsis of Oklahoma policy-related news and blogs. Inclusion of a story does not necessarily mean endorsement by the Oklahoma Policy Institute. You can sign up here to receive In The Know by e-mail.
Today you should know that Oklahoma’s recently enacted voter-ID law is unlikely to be overturned by a court challenge as it has in other states. Members of the Oklahoma Americans Elect Party filed a lawsuit seeking to get their presidential and vice presidential nominees on the November ballot. With growing majorities in the Oklahoma House and Senate, GOP legislative leaders are seeking to balance a broader spectrum of ideas and ideology.
Former State Senate Minority Leader Andrew Rice is returning to Oklahoma City as executive director of the Variety Care Foundation. The Oklahoma Daily reported on OU students who could lose SNAP benefits that they rely on to feed their families. The Tulsa World examined risks for Oklahomans with pre-existing conditions if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. Unemployment and mental health issues continue to concern military officials months after about 3,000 Oklahoma National Guard soldiers returned from deployments to Afghanistan and Kuwait.
Oklahoma received a score of 0.5 out of a possible 10 on an evaluation of state programs for pregnant and parenting students. Read the full report here. Thirteen Oklahoma school districts intend to apply for grants as part of the federal Race to the Top-District competition. A new Spanish-language education program launched by the government of Mexico and Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Tulsa will help Tulsa-area Hispanics learn to read and write in their native language.
A dispute has led state drug agents to be evicted from the McAlester office they shared with DEA agents for a decade. A former Oklahoma County jail detention officer was arrested for beating an inmate, the second such case in the past two months at the county jail. Chesapeake Energy is selling about 80,000 acres in Oklahoma as it continues to combat a looming cash crunch.
The Number of the Day is how many uninsured adults under 65 were in Oklahoma in 2010. It today’s Policy Note, the Economic Policy Institute examines how the decline of unions has contributed to rising inequality and faltering middle-class wages.
In The News
Oklahoma voter ID law unlikely to be challenged
Experts say Oklahoma’s recently enacted voter-identification law is substantially different from similar requirements that have been successfully challenged in other states. Last week, a federal court blocked a new voter-identification law in Texas, saying the state is subject to a federal law requiring it to seek permission before changing statutes governing voting – Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – based on prior discriminatory practices. A similar measure passed in South Carolina is under fire, as well. Both laws require photo identification to vote. Ryan Kiesel, an attorney, former lawmaker and head of the ACLU of Oklahoma, said Oklahoma’s situation is different from that in other states because Section 5 does not require Oklahoma to seek approval before changing election laws.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Oklahoma Americans Elect party sues to get on November ballot
Members of the Oklahoma Americans Elect Party filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to get their presidential and vice presidential nominees on the November ballot. “They complied with the law,” said James Linger, the Tulsa attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the chairman of the Oklahoma Americans Elect Party and the party’s seven presidential electors. The lawsuit filed with the Oklahoma Supreme Court also wants to stop state election officials from printing ballots until the high court rules. A hearing before a Supreme Court referee is set for Wednesday. Election officials had hoped to start printing ballots Tuesday in order to get them mailed to military members and others living in other countries by Sept. 21, or 45 days before the Nov. 6 election, to comply with federal law.
Growing GOP majority brings new challenges as Okla. legislative leaders seek to balance views
With Republicans now enjoying huge and growing majorities in the Oklahoma House and Senate, GOP legislative leaders are being forced to wrangle with a growing challenge — how to balance a broader spectrum of ideas and ideology as a steady stream of new conservatives prepare to take office. Last week, four new Republicans secured posts in the Oklahoma Legislature with victories in primary runoffs in races that drew no Democrats, including two new GOP senators who replace retiring Democrats. Two of those new Republican members — Sen.-elect Nathan Dahm of Broken Arrow and Rep.-elect Ken Walker of Tulsa — defeated better-funded, chamber of commerce-backed opponents in the Republican primary. Outgoing House Speaker Kris Steele’s battles with the right wing of the 70-member strong GOP caucus over the last two years were well documented, but now some lawmakers openly wonder whether a similar schism could emerge in the Senate, where Republicans are expected to build on their 32-16 majority.
Read more from the Associated Press.
Andrew Rice returns to Oklahoma as executive director of Variety Care Foundation
Former State Sen. Andrew Rice, who resigned his legislative post earlier this year to move to Tennessee, is returning to Oklahoma City as executive director of the Variety Care Foundation. Rice will be in charge of raising money and awareness for Variety Care, Oklahoma’s largest community health center that operates 13 part-time and full-time health care locations in Oklahoma. As a community health center, Variety provides health care for insured and uninsured people who have problems getting access to health care services. Last year, Variety Care provided medical, dental, vision and behavioral care, as well as nutrition education and food supplements, to more than 56,000 Oklahomans. Rice, 39, and his family moved to Nashville to support his wife’s medical career, but he said her job there wasn’t what she had hoped it would be.
Students could lose SNAP aid with budget cuts
Two hundred dollars doesn’t sound like much, but for Susana Rodriguez, it could mean the difference between a full fridge and a bare one. Rodriguez is a single mother pursuing her master’s degree in computer science at OU. She works on the side to help pay for school — she doesn’t have scholarships — and she also receives $200 a month from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Her 5-year-old son, Alex Mendez, also gets free meals automatically thanks to Rodriguez’s receiving the federal aid. But that all might change for Rodriguez and other students receiving federal aid from SNAP as the U.S. Legislative branch fights over how to make cuts to the federal aid program as part of the 2012 Farm Bill. Both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate want to limit access to SNAP aid for traditional college students by limiting access to only students pursuing employment-oriented degrees that are typically associated with vocational and technical schools.
Read more from the Oklahoma Daily.
Insuring Americans with pre-existing conditions is key in health care debate
Laura Marrs was bent over trying to read a map when her husband had to hit the brakes hard to avoid a collision. Although she didn’t know it yet, the sudden jolt that injured her back also propelled her to the cusp of insurance limbo. Some 14 years later, when her husband became self-employed, she discovered that she was no longer insurable. Spinal stimulator surgery that had helped relieve the chronic lower back pain that started on that driving vacation had given her a pre-existing condition. That pushed her out of the conventional individual insurance market at any price. Making sure Americans with pre-existing conditions can still get health insurance is a key element of the health insurance reform debate. A January study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that as many as 129 million Americans younger than 65 have some type of pre- existing health condition and would be at risk of losing health insurance if the Affordable Care Act is repealed.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Unemployment, mental health remain concerns for Oklahoma Guardsmen who have returned from deployments
Unemployment and mental health issues continue to concern military officials months after about 3,000 Oklahoma National Guard soldiers returned from deployments to Afghanistan and Kuwait. About 30 percent of the soldiers who returned from the deployment in March and April were unemployed when they got home. That number is now down to 22 percent, said Warren Griffis, director of the Guard’s employment coordination program. “It’s high, but some of the numbers are people who may not have reported to us they got a job,” Griffis said. “Getting the accurate data has been a little tough. We also have full-time students. That’s about 10 percent. Those are in the unemployment number.” One of the hardest challenges is finding soldiers jobs where the pay is competitive with what they made while on active duty, Griffis said. There are jobs available, but many soldiers have a hard time taking a major pay cut.
Report: Schools lack programs for pregnant students
Equal rights for girls under the federal 1972 Title IX of the Education Amendments isn’t just for sports. It is also for pregnant students and teenage mothers, and a recent national report shows states aren’t doing too well meeting this mandate. The National Women’s Law Center released a state-by-state look at what supports and protections are available for young mothers in secondary schools. The group cites cases where schools refused to excuse absences for childbirth, teachers not allowing makeup work for pregnancy or child-related absences and not allowing for home-bound services for pregnancy-related illnesses. Teen mothers report being pressured into less academically rigorous tracks or alternative programs for “at-risk” youth and are subjected to harassment by other students. Oklahoma finishes on the lower end of the nonprofit’s state rankings, receiving a score of .5 out of a possible 10 on an evaluation of state programs for pregnant and parenting students.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
See also: The impact of education laws on pregnant and parenting students from the National Women’s Law Center
13 Oklahoma districts to compete for Race to the Top grants
Thirteen Oklahoma school districts intend to apply for grants as part of the federal Race to the Top-District competition. The U.S. Department of Education announced Friday that 893 applicants will participate in the program that will hand out nearly $400 million in grants. The program aims to support local initiatives that help close achievement gaps and prepare students for college and a career. The districts in Oklahoma that have filed the intent are: Bartlesville, Bethany, Comanche, Duncan, El Reno, Elgin, Fort Gibson, Purcell, Kingfisher, Lawton, Mountain View-Gotebo, Oklahoma City and Southeastern Oklahoma Interlocal Cooperative.
Spanish-language education program provides Hispanic adults with diploma
“What’s a verb?” That question, which came up in a recent English as a Second Language class in Tulsa, underscores the need for a new Spanish-language education program launched Friday by the government of Mexico and Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Tulsa. In a ceremony at Catholic Charities, David Preciado Juarez with the Mexican Consulate in Little Rock, Ark., signed an agreement establishing the Community Plaza program here. Many Tulsa-area Hispanics have trouble learning to read and write in English because they can’t read or write in their native language, said Heidi Hernandez, director of Community Plaza in Tulsa. The free program, taught in Spanish, will give adults an opportunity to complete the equivalent of an eighth-grade education and receive a diploma from the secretary of public education of Mexico. It is open to all Spanish-speaking adults. Hernandez said no one knows how many Tulsa-area Hispanics have poor reading and writing skills in Spanish, but the number is “really high.”
Read more from the Tulsa World.
DEA evicts state drug agents from McAlester office
A dispute between two agencies has led to state drug agents being evicted from the McAlester office they shared with DEA agents for a decade and has allegedly harmed federal drug investigations, records show. The simmering dispute between the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control and the Oklahoma bureau of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has resulted in charges of “intrinsic arrogance” and reached officials at the highest state and federal levels. Underlying the dispute, said OBN Director Darrell Weaver, is an attempt by DEA agents in Oklahoma to create a drug task force in which OBN agents would answer to DEA supervisors. “I’ve said all along, ‘We will work with you but we are not working for you.’ … We aren’t going to be their task force,” Weaver told the Tulsa World.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Second Oklahoma County jail guard accused of beating inmate
A 49-year-old former Oklahoma County jail detention officer was arrested Monday, accused of beating an inmate with a set of metal keys, court records show. The incident is the second such case in the past two months at the county jail. A probable cause affidavit filed in the case by an Oklahoma County sheriff’s investigator recommends former detention officer Michael Coleman, of Oklahoma City, be charged with one count of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and two counts of possession of contraband in a penal institution. Court records state Coleman “used his fists and a set of metal keys to strike” inmate Shawn Rose, 19, who is at the jail awaiting transfer to a state prison. Coleman also is charged with possessing contraband because investigators found a working cellphone and a seven-inch folding knife when they searched him after his arrest, documents state.
Chesapeake looking to sell Oklahoma assets
Chesapeake Energy Corp. has put more of its assets on the sale block as it continues to combat a looming cash crunch. Chesapeake is selling about 80,000 acres in Grady, Stephens and Garvin counties, an extension of the Cana Woodford Shale, according to a prospectus from industry broker Meagher Energy Advisors. Nearly all of Chesapeake’s leases in the area are held by production. The company has nearly 300 producing wells in the area, with daily production of more than 1,500 barrels of oil and 37 million cubic feet of natural gas. Chesapeake contends there is significant upside to drilling the play, which counts Continental Resources Inc., Newfield Exploration Co. and Marathon Oil Co. as its most active drillers. Chesapeake is selling its acreage because it does not have enough money in its drilling budget to “adequately develop the abundant additional opportunities in the area,” according to the listing.
Quote of the Day
It can happen to anybody. It can happen to you tomorrow. It doesn’t matter if you’re low-income, high-income, uneducated or not, young or old. That’s … why I think it needs to be affordable because anybody can be in this situation in a flash of light.
–Laura Marrs, one of thousands of Oklahomans who can’t buy conventional health insurance because of a pre-existing condition
Number of the Day
691,408
Number of uninsured adults under 65 in Oklahoma in 2010; nearly 25,000 additional adults were uninsured compared to 2009.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
See previous Numbers of the Day here.
Policy Note
Unions, inequality, and faltering middle-class wages
Between 1973 and 2011, the median worker’s real hourly compensation (which includes wages and benefits) rose just 10.7 percent. Most of this growth occurred in the late 1990s wage boom, and once the boom subsided by 2002 and 2003, real wages and compensation stagnated for most workers— college graduates and high school graduates alike. This has made the last decade a “lost decade” for wage growth. The last decade has also been characterized by increased wage inequality between workers at the top and those at the middle, and by the continued divergence between overall productivity and the wages or compensation of the typical worker. A major factor driving these trends has been the ongoing erosion of unionization and the declining bargaining power of unions, along with the weakened ability of unions to set norms or labor standards that raise the wages of comparable nonunion workers. This preview of the forthcoming The State of Working America, 12th Edition presents a detailed analysis of the impact of unionization on wages and benefits and on wage inequality.
Read more from the Economic Policy Institute.
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