OKPOLICY.ORG
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.
The Oklahoma Senate passed a bill to ban texting while driving and approved an amendment to make it a primary offense, which means drivers could be pulled over for texting. The Legislature approved a ban on a common second-trimester abortion procedure that critics describe as dismembering a fetus. The Tulsa school board approved a three-year contract worth up to $855,000 in base salary and bonuses for incoming Superintendent Deborah Gist. State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister announced two new hires Wednesday to complete her leadership team at the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
Attorney Adam Banner discussed how severely overcrowded and understaffed Oklahoma prisons are facing additional budget cuts this year. House Speaker Jeff Hickman has commented that Oklahoma prisons are “one lawsuit away” from a federal takeover. On the OK Policy Blog, we shared a short film that dramatically illustrates the barriers for ex-felons trying to rebuild their lives and do the right thing. Oklahoma puts up numerous barriers to finding affordable housing, education, and jobs for people coming out of prison.
David Blatt’s Journal Record column discussed how ambitious proposals for election reform have been whittled down in the Legislature. A measure that seeks to amend the Oklahoma Constitution to shield agriculture from regulation is headed to the Senate floor. Student athletes and their parents would be notified about the risks of sudden cardiac arrest under a bill passed by the House. State Rep. Bobby Cleveland announced he has withdrawn his request for an attorney general’s opinion on whether the Association of County Commissioners of Oklahoma must follow the state Open Meeting Act and Open Records Act, because he doesn’t want to interfere with ongoing investigations by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and state auditor.
The Tulsa city council will consider an ordinance change to add gay and transgender Tulsans to those protected under the city’s fair housing policy. A group may sue Duncan Public Schools over claims that a third-grade teacher distributed Bibles during her class. Wilma Mankiller, the Cherokee Nation’s first woman to serve as its chief, has been nominated alongside Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks as suggestions to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
The Number of the Day is 82% – the percentage of Oklahomans who drive to work alone. In today’s Policy Note, the Washington Post discusses the double-standard of making the poor prove they’re worthy of government benefits, while we don’t make similar demands of middle-class and wealthy Americans who receive farm subsidies, student loans, and mortgage tax breaks.
In The News
Senate passes amended bill making texting while driving a primary offense
Texting while driving would be a primary offense under a measure passed Wednesday by the Oklahoma Senate. House Bill 1965 was approved by a 38-6 vote and returns to the House for consideration. As a primary offense, drivers could be pulled over for texting while driving and be given a citation. As a secondary offense, the driver would have to be stopped for another infraction first before being cited for texting while driving.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Oklahoma lawmakers OK ban on second-trimester abortion method
Oklahoma would ban a common second-trimester abortion procedure that critics describe as dismembering a fetus under a measure that lawmakers overwhelmingly approved Wednesday, a day after Kansas became the first state to prohibit the same procedure. The Senate voted 37-4 for the bill, which now goes to Republican Gov. Mary Fallin. Of the roughly 5,000 abortions performed in Oklahoma in 2013, about 5 percent were performed using this procedure, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health.
Read more from the Associated Press.
Tulsa school board strikes $855,000 three-year contract deal with next superintendent
Tulsa’s next superintendent got a three-year contract worth up to $855,000 in base salary and bonuses alone on Wednesday. At a special meeting that lasted nearly four hours, the school board voted 6-0 to approve Deborah Gist’s employment contract. But board member Gary Percefull left the meeting 15 minutes before the vote was taken.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister completes leadership team with two new hires
State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister announced two new hires Wednesday to complete her leadership team at the Oklahoma State Department of Education. Weatherford Public Schools Superintendent Matt Holder has been tapped to serve as chief operations officer. Heather Griswold, director of an Oklahoma City business advocacy organization, will serve as deputy chief of staff.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Woefully Understaffed Dept. of Corrections Faces Additional Cuts
Overcrowded, underfunded, and understaffed: these are among the top three words used to describe Oklahoma prisons, and despite the Department of Corrections’ pleas for adequate funding and staffing, the beleaguered DOC faces additional budget cuts this year. Oklahoma has one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation, coupled with one of the lowest staffing rates and one of the poorest pay rates for corrections officers in the nation.
Read more from Oklahoma Legal Group.
See also: Oklahoma ‘one lawsuit away’ from a federal takeover from OK Policy.
Watch This: ‘Locked Out’
In 5 minutes, ‘Locked Out’ by Human Pictures Film dramatically illustrates the barriers for ex-felons trying to rebuild their lives and do the right thing. Excluding Americans with a felony record from affordable housing, student loans, and jobs leaves many with little way to survive outside of prison.
Read more from the OK Policy Blog.
Prosperity Policy: Go small and go home
As someone who has now spent nearly 20 years working at the Oklahoma Capitol, one thing I’ve come to learn is that it’s the place where big, bold policy ideas come to die – or at least get whittled down. Every session sees the introduction of numerous ambitious and comprehensive plans. They target subjects that policymakers and citizens see as desperately needing action – criminal justice, taxes, health care, education, or others. Then interest groups weigh in and constituents speak up.
Read more from The Journal Record.
Constitutional amendment to shield agriculture from regulation before Senate
A measure that asks voters to enshrine the rights of farmers and ranchers in the Oklahoma Constitution is headed to the Senate floor. The Senate Rules Committee passed House Joint Resolution 1012, by Rep. Scott Biggs, R-Chickasha, and Sen. Jason Smalley, R-Stroud, on Wednesday. It is opposed by the Humane Society of the United States, the Oklahoma Municipal League and the Oklahoma Sierra Club. Cynthia Armstrong, Oklahoma state director for the Humane Society of the United States, said the measure would shield industrial agriculture from common sense reforms.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Bill aims at raising awareness of sudden cardiac arrest
Student athletes and their parents would be notified about the risks of sudden cardiac arrest under a bill passed by the House on Tuesday. The measure also requires that coaches receive yearly instruction about these risks. Senate Bill 239 is named after Chase Morris, a 16-year-old boy who died in May 2013. The bill would require parents to sign a document before their child participates in school athletic programs.
Oklahoma state lawmaker withdraws request of attorney general’s opinion
State Rep. Bobby Cleveland announced Tuesday he has withdrawn his request for a state attorney general’s opinion on whether the Association of County Commissioners of Oklahoma must follow the state Open Meeting Act and Open Records Act. Cleveland, R-Slaughterville, said he remains committed to his belief that the association should abide by those acts, but was withdrawing his request because he doesn’t want to interfere with ongoing investigations by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and state auditor.
Proposal would expand city’s fair housing policy to protect gay, transgender Tulsans
Gay and transgender Tulsans would be among those protected under an amendment to the city’s fair housing policy to be discussed by city councilors Thursday. The proposed ordinance change would add sexual orientation and gender identity to a long list of protected classes under the city ordinance. Religious organizations and those renting rooms in an owner-occupied dwelling used exclusively as a rooming house would be exempt from the proposed policy change.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Group accuses Duncan teacher of distributing Bibles
A group may sue Duncan Public Schools over claims that a teacher distributed Bibles during her class. The Appignani Humanist Legal Center says it was contacted by parent of a Woodrow Wilson Elementary third-grader. The group says his teacher offered small New Testament Bibles during class time, and that he felt pressured to follow his classmates and take one.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Wilma Mankiller makes top four list for a woman on the $20
The Cherokee Nation’s first woman to serve as its chief is named alongside Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks as suggestions for the $20 bill. Oklahoma can stand tall with Wilma Mankiller. American Indian tribes have been arguing for decades to remove to Andrew Jackson from our money. The latest move to oust Jackson comes from the Women On 20s group, which is an online campaign to gather support for women on American paper money.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
See also: WomenOn20s.org
Quote of the Day
“And actually there was one company that was looking at one of our cities in Oklahoma and they had all these different cities they were comparing, different states, and they actually said, ‘I chose not to come to Oklahoma because you rank poor in health, and if you have unhealthy workers, and unhealthy people, then my health insurance costs are gonna be higher, plus, people are gonna be taking off work ’cause they’re just not healthy and they won’t be as productive.”
-Governor Mary Fallin, who said her plan to reverse the state’s poor health statistics revolves around telling Oklahomans to take more personal responsibility (Source).
Number of the Day
82%
Percentage of Oklahomans who drive to work alone
Source: 2015 County Health Rankings.
See previous Numbers of the Day here.
Policy Note
The double-standard of making the poor prove they’re worthy of government benefits
Poverty looks pretty great if you’re not living in it. The government gives you free money to spend on steak and lobster, on tattoos and spa days, on — why not? — cruise vacations and psychic visits. Enough serious-minded people seem to think this is what the poor actually buy with their meager aid that we’ve now seen a raft of bills and proposed state laws to nudge them away from so much excess. Missouri wants to curtail what the poor eat with their food stamps (evidence of the problem from one state legislator: “I have seen people purchasing filet mignons”).
Read more from The Washington Post.
You can sign up here to receive In The Know by e-mail.
Mr. Banner does fine detailing the current and future problems of OK’s prisons, but his analysis of what is driving the state’s prison population growth is very incomplete. Drug offenders as a rule churn through the prisons pretty quickly since most are on the shorter sentences compared to violent or 85% crimes. Decriminalizing or legalizing would have greater impact on avoiding the add-ons that eventually put those folks in prison and adding a few years to their sentences after a couple or more run-ins. And most 85% crimes are not the high percentage of receptions year after year, although the offenders can stack up and add to long-term prison growth.
The REAL drivers of OK’s prison population growth are the counties and their DAs who use the state’s credit card to pay for their local judgments of “justice,” which would be far, far more nuanced if the counties and DAs actually had to pay the bills themselves. Law professors David Ball and John Pfaff have detailed all this in easily Google-able (!!) articles. No significant and lasting decreases in the state’s prison population will occur until offenses are taken out of the hands of the counties and DAs (not just decrim/legalization but also requiring pharmaceutical treatment for alcoholics rather than jails, increased thresholds for felony property crimes especially for businesses that pass security costs they should pay on to state taxpayers, etc.).
In other areas in which local jurisdictions deal with populations that could skyrocket, such as school districts or colleges, state policymakers found ways to cap the state expenditures, such as through formulas or tuition increases. Taking a similar approach, telling counties and DAs that they have XXX dollars to spend from the state this year on criminal justice matters (and there are a variety of ways to do that that other states have done, like Minnesota with its juvenile justice system) would immediately pass control of the state’s budget from the counties and DAs (every felony sentence is a state budget decision) to state policymakers. And the research is very clear that this can be done without significant changes in crime rates and that the changes that occur are likely to be improvements, not more harm.
It’s understandable why an attorney with a practice in drug case defenses would advocate for lower prison populations and more sensible drug laws in OK. In and of themselves, the law changes would be beneficial, as CO is showing daily. But expecting OK’s prison populations to be substantially lowered through the remedies he proposes would be yet one more bet on sentencing and corrections reform that OK would lose.