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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. E-mail your suggestions for In The Know items to gperry@okpolicy.org. You can sign up here to receive In The Know by e-mail.
Today you should know that lack of access to health care and poor prevention and treatment measures put Tulsa and OKC among the worst regions in the country in overall health. With Oklahoma already facing a primary care doctor shortage, lawmakers want to eliminate a rural doctor training program to pay for income tax cuts. The Senate passed a revenue neutral tax bill that lowers the top income tax rate by half a percent and eliminates tax credits. See OK Policy’s summary and comparison of major tax proposals in the Legislature.
The Tulsa World profiled a former heroin addict who attributes her recovery to drug court. The Senate passed a bill that would ban taking out loans to fund a lawsuit. The OK Policy Blog has a guest post examining how bad the housing crisis was in Oklahoma. The subject will be discussed at free lectures tonight in Oklahoma City and tomorrow in Tulsa.
The House passed several bills meant to reform Oklahoma’s Department of Human Services, including two that would abolish the DHS Commission and put the agency under direct control of the Legislature. The House also approved a measure to create a new state Secretary of Native American Affairs.
The Oklahoma Water Resources Board took steps to lower the amount of water that can be removed from a southern Oklahoma aquifer to 1/10th of what is currently allowed. The unemployment rate fell in 45 states, including Oklahoma.
The Number of the Day is how many international students attended college in Oklahoma in 2011. In today’s Policy Note, economist and former Reagan advisor Bruce Bartlett points out that the rich are getting richer in high tax and low tax countries alike, so there is no economic reason not to raise the top rate.
In The News
Tulsa, Oklahoma City health among the worst in the U.S.
Lack of access to health care and poor prevention and treatment measures put the Tulsa area among the worst regions in the country in overall health, according to a new study. Out of more than 300 regions studied, the Commonwealth Fund report ranks Tulsa in the bottom 10 percent for overall health-care quality. Tulsa is tied for spot 281 out of 306 hospital referral regions. Oklahoma City came in even worse at 298. Southern states consistently performed worse than other areas in overall quality of care, the report shows. The region was particularly poor in dental care. More than 15 percent of adults in the region have lost six or more teeth because of decay, infection or disease. The percent of adults who had visited a dentist in the past year was 12 percent lower than the median.
Read more from The Tulsa World.
With Oklahoma already facing doctor shortage, lawmakers want to eliminate rural doctor training program to pay for tax cut
Cutting Oklahoma’s income tax means cutting into the single largest source of state tax revenue. Many of these income tax-reduction plans count on the expectation that other tax revenues — like the sales tax — will increase as Oklahoma’s economy prospers under a reduced income tax. But spending cuts are a big piece of the pie, and the backers of one phase-out plan have issued a list of what should be axed, including a state commission to increase the number of doctors practicing in rural Oklahoma. Oklahoma is short on rural doctors, and the Physician Manpower Training Commission is one of few agencies Gov. Mary Fallin wants to give more money to. But the commission is one of several that could be non-appropriated to help pay for phasing out the personal income tax, some backers of House Bill 3038 proposed.
Read more from StateImpact Oklahoma.
Mazzei income tax cut passes Senate; revenue neutral bill couples reduction with elimination of tax credits
A bill that would reduce the top personal income tax rate from 5.25 percent to 4.75 percent over a two-year period, offsetting the resulting revenue loss by eliminating certain tax credits, passed the Senate Tuesday evening. SB 1623 is a product of the Joint Task Force on Comprehensive Tax Reform. SB 1623 cuts 25 tax credits in half from July 1, 2012 through 2013, reduces another six by 50 percent in tax year 2013, does away with all 31 in 2014 and eliminates the transferability of six tax credits beginning Jan. 1 of next year. Sen. Richard Lerblance, D-Hartshorne, criticized the measure for eliminating tax breaks for military service members, employer-provided child care, volunteer firefighter training, shortline railroads, expenses of disabled individuals for modification of their vehicles, adoption, college savings, property tax relief for seniors, the earned income tax credit and others. Mazzei acknowledged that the list of credits due for elimination needs some study, and possibly some changes.
Read more from 23rd and Lincoln.
See also: Summary and comparison of major tax proposals from OK Policy
Recovering Tulsa addict praises drug court
A second chance at Drug Court saved Marsha Patton’s life. Patton, 51, started taking prescription pills for pain and stress and, within a period of five years, ended up a heroin junkie. She sold her condo and most of her possessions to fund her drug habit. She lived in a house with a guy who dealt drugs. She hit bottom in 2009 when she was arrested twice in a period of a few months. She was awaiting trial on one set of drug possession charges when she was arrested again. A Tulsa County judge gave her one last shot at Drug Court. Her attorney said she had better take it unless she wanted to spend some serious time in prison. Although she had no health insurance, Tulsa drug court secured Patton a bed at a facility called 12 & 12 for detox and substance abuse treatment. Family & Children’s Services provided her with addiction counseling, and she now has about six months left on her plea agreement.
Read more from The Tulsa World.
Oklahoma could ban lawsuit financing
A year after the lawsuit financing industry tried to have its legislative agenda passed in nine states, a bill that would ban the practice passed the Oklahoma Senate Tuesday. Oklahoma Senate Bill 1780 would make it against the law for a company to make a loan to a plaintiff that would be paid back from settlement funds or a jury award. It would apply to any case pending in an Oklahoma state court or any federal court in the state. The bill makes lawsuit financing a violation of the Consumer Protection Act. It passed in a 26-18 vote, according to the Legislature’s website. In lawsuit financing agreements, a plaintiff is given an amount usually between $500 and $5,000 with the promise of paying the company back with funds from a settlement or jury award. If the plaintiff loses, nothing is owed.
Read more from Legal Newsline.
Oklahoma’s housing crisis: How bad was it?
The boom in subprime mortgage lending in the early 2000s is widely recognized as the underlying cause of the country’s recent financial crisis and subsequent Great Recession. Subprime mortgages are loans offered at interest above the prime rate. When millions of homeowners began to default on their high-interest subprime mortgages in 2007, the bottom fell out of the housing market. This set off a chain reaction that threatened the nation’s largest financial institutions, who had sunk trillions into unsustainable mortgages on overvalued properties. Much of the blame falls on the financial institutions themselves, whose predatory practices and reckless behavior has since been scrutinized and rejected. This post examines the subprime lending boom in Oklahoma, where the housing market continues to outshine harder-hit states. In many other states (particularly Arizona, Nevada, Florida, and California), widespread foreclosures and plummeting home values have hampered economic recovery. How bad was the housing crisis in Oklahoma?
Read more from the OK Policy Blog.
House passes several measures affecting DHS
The House of Representatives approved several bills Tuesday seeking to improve the Department of Human Services in response to a federal class-action lawsuit. The measures deal with improving accountability and efficiency in the state’s child welfare system as well as opening up more records to the public. All passed easily and are now headed to the Senate. Rep. Jason Nelson, who heads up a five-member House work group, said the language in the bills is preliminary and will change as they work their way through the process. Some of the bills deal with an improvement plan that is to be submitted by March 30 to a Tulsa federal judge. The plan is to address 15 areas, which include caseload limits, number of available foster families and frequency of home visits by workers.
House OKs measure to create Secretary of Indian Affairs post
The House has approved a measure to create a new state Secretary of Native American Affairs and revised the tribal liaison’s job duties after objections from the Governor’s Office. Last year, Gov. Mary Fallin signed a law creating a state tribal liaison position to replace the state Indian Affairs Commission but subsequently did not fill the position as mandated by the law. Officials in the Governor’s Office said they were troubled by requirements that the liaison be at least one-quarter American Indian and that the office had the authority to negotiate compacts with tribes. The new bill eliminates the specific racial requirement but does require that the post be filled with a member of a state-based tribe. The negotiating authority also was removed.
Read more from The Tulsa World.
Oklahoma Water Resources Board moves to lower withdrawal limits from southern Oklahoma aquifer
The Oklahoma Water Resources Board took steps Tuesday to lower the amount of water that can be removed in a single year from the Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer in southern Oklahoma. The board approved recommendations from its staff that would lower the amount of water that can be withdrawn from the aquifer in a single year from two acre feet per acre to two-tenths of an acre foot per acre — 10 times less than the old regulations allow for at present. An implementation time frame of five years also has been recommended by the agency’s staff due to the fragile state of the aquifer, which is considered a sole-source groundwater basin. Brian Vance, a water resources board spokesman, said the proposed maximum yields won’t take effect until a public hearing is held in May and a final determination is approved by the water board some time after that.
Oklahoma unemployment rate dips to 6.1 percent as employment numbers near pre-recession high
Oklahoma’s jobless rate fell to 6.1 percent in January as the number of employed Oklahomans edged close to the pre-recession high, the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission reported Tuesday. January’s 6.1 percent unemployment rate for the state is the lowest rate since last spring and comes after five straight months of 6.3 percent unemployment, according to revised numbers for 2011. The U.S. unemployment rate for January was 8.3 percent. Oklahoma was one of 45 U.S. states that posted lower jobless rates in January, a sign that nearly all of the country is benefiting from an improving economy and job market. The number of employed Oklahomans rose to 1,675,780, about 1,000 less than were employed in March 2008. However, the jobless rate four years ago was just 3.3 percent.
Quote of the Day
The concerns we have had are now confirmed. If we do not have health insurance, we delay getting the care we need, do not have regular access to care, and that will bring down the overall health status and health care results of our region.
–Daniel Duffy, dean of the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine, on a report that ranks Oklahoma City and Tulsa among the worst regions in the country in overall health
Number of the Day
8,626
Number of international students attending college in Oklahoma in 2011. A third of those come from China, India, and Saudi Arabia.
Source: Institute of International Education
See previous Numbers of the Day here.
Policy Note
Would a higher top tax rate raise revenues?
On Friday, Prof. Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University, a well-known conservative economist, offered a commentary in The Wall Street Journal arguing against policies to equalize the distribution of income. His key piece of evidence is a chart that shows the share of income accruing to the top 1 percent of earners in seven Western democracies. They all follow the same trend line, Professor Meltzer says, and it proves that “domestic policy can’t be the principal reason for the current spread between high earners and others.” He seems to have missed an important implication of his own conclusion. If, as Professor Meltzer has shown, the rich get richer regardless of the tax rates, there is no economic reason not to raise the top rate.
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