Tag: Oklahoma

What are we buying? Effectiveness measures from our upcoming Online Guide

Like most people who watch public budgets, we tend to focus on what is being spent, at the expense of what is being bought. Our upcoming Online Guide to Oklahoma Budget and Taxes looks at state and local expenditures more… Read more [More...]

Summer Re-run: Child abuse and neglect numbers moving in right direction

Note – Occasionally we plan to re-run blog posts on topical subjects that you may have missed the first time around. Last week brought word from DHS that the number of confirmed cases of child abuse and neglect in Oklahoma… Read more [More...]

Pension system liabilities: the train at the end of the tunnel

It will be worth your time to check out Better, Faster, Cheaper, a blog produced by former Indianapolis Mayor Steve Goldsmith for the Kennedy School of Government. Among its gems is an excellent article by William Eggers, The Pension Time… Read more [More...]

Man, oh, man – The downturn hammers male employment

The Oklahoman recently ran an editorial calling attention to the especially heavy toll that the current recession is having on male workers nationally and here in Oklahoma. A new issue brief from Economic Policy Institute, using data from the Bureau… Read more [More...]

Is spending the easy part? Stimulus transparency is opaque

As the debate about the speed and impact of stimulus spending rages on, Good Jobs First is taking on the less glamorous but equally important task of assessing accountability in state spending of funds from the stimulus bill (more formally,… Read more [More...]

The Art of budget forecasting

We have not yet reached the end of the first month of the new fiscal year but already Treasurer Scott Meacham has publicly predicted that state General Revenue collections will fall far enough short of the forecast to trigger an… Read more [More...]

New remittance law shows why transparency might be a good idea

In the last days of this year’s legislative session, House Bill 2250 passed with little fanfare. HB 2250 puts a  tax on wire transfers–$5 plus one percent on the amount over $500, with proceeds going to the Bureau of Narcotics… Read more [More...]

Lifting the wage floor

As of today, the federal minimum wage increases to $7.25 per hour, the final step in a three-step increase approved by Congress in 2007, after a decade when the minimum wage remained frozen at $5.15. Thirty-one states, including Oklahoma, will… Read more [More...]

Health care reform: Expanding Medicaid for lowest-income adults

As the national health care reform debate continues to heat up, most of the controversy has centered on such hot-button issues as the public  option, individual and employer mandates, and paying for expanded coverage. One issue that is of considerable… Read more [More...]

Dealing with revenue shortfalls–this year and beyond

Last week, State Treasurer Scott Meacham unveiled the the state revenue report for June, 2009. Revenue was below the previous year, for both  the last  month and the fiscal year as a whole, as we reported earlier. It’s natural to… Read more [More...]