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Today In The News
Attracting New Industries To Oklahoma Is Serious Business: Even as the state’s unemployment rate has made a steady decline in recent months, the work of those whose job is to try and create more jobs is certainly not done. It never is, especially in a state like Oklahoma where the economy can be very fragile. The tendency for crude oil and natural gas prices to fluctuate wildly, and unexpectedly, has made it abundantly clear in recent decades that the bottom can fall out of the state’s leading industry at, seemingly, a moment’s notice. [NewsOn6]
State’s most vulnerable citizens in jeopardy: Though detractors continue to insist the DHS needs to “live within its means,” cuts imposed by the Legislature have made that almost impossible. The agency has slashed 1,200 jobs just over the past two years, about 15 percent of its workforce. Staffers are forced to share the burden in addressing client needs, and that has become an almost insurmountable task with the skeletal resources now allocated. [Tahlequah Daily Press] In dispute between Republican leaders over DHS funding, here are the facts [OK Policy]
Senator seeks to nail down state’s cost for defending unconstitutional laws: In the past few years, Oklahoma lawmakers have passed more than a dozen bills that later were found to be unconstitutional. Sen. Kay Floyd wants to determine how much that has cost the state. Her idea is among 44 interim studies approved last week and assigned to legislative committees. Committee chairs will have the final say on whether a study is conducted. [Tulsa World]
Oklahoma is addicted to locking up women who belong on the job and with their families: Oklahoma’s addiction to locking up women who belong on the job and with their families is earning more bad press. Beyond the bad publicity, Oklahoma’s outrageous habit of throwing away salvageable lives is just plain bad. If the mere morality of the issue doesn’t convince you, consider these arguments: It runs up the state’s corrections budget, robs money from education, overcrowds our prisons, makes it harder to hold onto dangerous criminals, shrinks the work force, continues the cycle of poverty across generations, and establishes the precedent that Oklahoma treats medical problems with incarceration. It also makes us no safer. [Wayne Green/Tulsa World] What works to stop crime (hint: it’s not incarceration) [OK Policy]
Fighting for justice for our people: When the U.S. surgeon general visited Oklahoma in May 2016, he declared the “prescription opioid epidemic that is sweeping across the U.S. has hit Indian country particularly hard.” This is absolutely felt in the Cherokee Nation, where opioid-related overdoses have more than doubled in recent years and more Cherokee Nation citizens suffer from opioid addiction. [Principal Chief Bill John Baker/The Oklahoman]
Legislators to study oil-less economy options: It might be hard to imagine Oklahoma’s economy without oil and gas production, but a handful of legislators are attempting to plan for it. Legislative leaders approved a joint interim study on the perennial topic. For more than a decade, two lawmakers have introduced bills that would create savings accounts to hedge against the drop in production taxes. This year, four lawmakers came together to request the study. [Journal Record] The state budget deficit is not just oil prices [OK Policy]
Constituents push back on car fee: Gov. Mary Fallin applied her signature to nearly 400 bills and resolutions that state lawmakers sent to her desk. She wielded her veto 17 times. Since the first laws became effective July 1, State Rep. George Faught, R-Muskogee, hears most from his constituents about one. “It’s the fee on car sales,” Faught said. “I’ve talked to some car dealers that have heard from folks who bought the car, paid for it, then went to go tag it and they had that extra fee. That is causing some problems for the dealers, and the [Oklahoma] Tax Commission is working with them.” [Tahlequah Daily Press]
Service tax a tough sell in Oklahoma, nationwide: This year, Gov. Mary Fallin called for applying the state’s 4.5 percent sales tax to numerous services, which would have increased taxes $839.7 million annually. Once you added in associated sales taxes from cities and counties, the total tax increase may have run as high as $1.7 billion. Fallin offset some of that with other tax cuts, but the net effect remained a large tax increase. The plan died in the Legislature, based in part on strong public opposition. [Editorial Board/The Oklahoman]
Is Oklahoma Quality Jobs Program Worth Its Cost?: Tax credits and other incentives are a significant part of any state’s economic development strategy. In Oklahoma, the incentive that is often credited for doing the most to create new jobs is the Quality Jobs Program, and yet there’s healthy debate among economists as to its true value and whether it’s worth the cost. [NewsOn6]
The U.S. Tested 67 Nuclear Bombs in Their Country. Now They’re Dying in Oklahoma: Many leave the islands in search of the same things as other migrants – work, education, health care. But an unusual shadow trails the Marshallese. Following the Second World War, the United States used the islands as a testing ground for its nuclear weapons program, detonating more than 60 bombs over a dozen years. The largest, the “Castle Bravo” test, blew a crater 6,510 feet wide in the lagoon of Bikini Atoll and ignited a fireball visible from 250 miles away. Children on neighboring islands played in the ashy fallout, which fell like snow from the sky. [Narratively]
Oklahoma State Medical Association files legal brief supporting cigarette fee: The Oklahoma State Medical Association filed a legal brief with the state Supreme Court on Friday expressing support for the $1.50 per pack cigarette fee passed by the Oklahoma Legislature during the closing days of the last session. “The Oklahoma State Medical Association staunchly believes that increasing the cost of tobacco will save lives,” Dr. Kevin Taubman, president of the state medical association, said in a news release that announced the filing of the legal brief. [The Oklahoman]
Quote of the Day
“Beyond the bad publicity, Oklahoma’s outrageous habit of throwing away salvageable lives is just plain bad. If the mere morality of the issue doesn’t convince you, consider these arguments: It runs up the state’s corrections budget, robs money from education, overcrowds our prisons, makes it harder to hold onto dangerous criminals, shrinks the work force, continues the cycle of poverty across generations, and establishes the precedent that Oklahoma treats medical problems with incarceration. It also makes us no safer.”
– Wayne Green of the Tulsa World discussing Oklahoma’s high female incarceration rate – the highest in the nation (Source)
Number of the Day
6.8%
Share of President Trump’s proposed tax cuts that would go to middle- and lower-income Oklahomans; 56.3 percent of the tax cuts would go to the richest 1 percent.
Source: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
See previous Numbers of the Day here.
Policy Note
Republicans say Medicaid is ‘broken.’ Here’s how the people it covers feel: Politicians call the Medicaid program that provides health care for the poor “broken.” Academic studies have reported on its limited health benefits or the longer appointment wait times that people with Medicaid face. But as Republicans feverishly work to revise a health-care bill that would trigger deep cuts to the program over time, a massive new survey reveals that people enrolled in Medicaid rate their health care pretty high. On a scale of 0 (“the worst health care possible”) to 10 (“the best health care possible”), more than 270,000 people covered by Medicaid in 46 states rated their health care at an average of 7.9, according to an analysis in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. That’s just slightly worse than how Medicare enrollees rated their health care — and not far behind how privately insured patients feel about their coverage. [Washington Post]
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