FY '10 Budget: Not a done deal?

Just before the start of the Legislative session, Governor Henry announced that he had reached an agreement with Speaker Benge and President Pro Tem Coffee on the FY ’10 budget.  Faced with projected mid-year revenue shortfalls of slightly more than… Read more [More...]

A first look at the Governor’s FY ’11 budget

In Monday’s State of the State address, Governor Henry laid out the broad parameters of his FY ’11 Executive budget. The Governor’s speech likened our current fiscal storm to the severe weather the state has faced recently and so often… Read more [More...]

Saving the Rainy Day Fund won't work

Our friends over at Oklahomans for Responsible Government have a blog post up on the FY ’10 budget agreement expressing dismay over the use of (an unspecified amount of) Rainy Day Funds to help cover this year’s revenue shortfall. They… Read more [More...]

FY '10 budget agreement leaves questions and challenges

In a press release Tuesday afternoon, Governor Brad Henry, Speaker Chris Benge and Senate Pro-Tem Glenn Coffee announced agreement on how to address the shortfalls in the FY ’10 budget that have resulted from this year’s revenues coming in sharply… Read more [More...]

Learning from the crisis (2): Strengthening our reserve funds

As state leaders struggle to find solutions to this year’s revenue shortfalls and funding gaps, it is not too soon to draw lessons from the current state fiscal crisis to design policies that will allow us to respond better the… Read more [More...]

The Rainy Day Fund debate: Not if, but when…and how much?

If state fiscal conditions can be likened to the weather, it’s been apparent for many months that Oklahoma is in the midst of a toad strangler of a rain, to borrow the Tulsa World’s colorful characterization. Going into the current… Read more [More...]

Continuing bleak revenue collections provide no easy solutions

Yesterday’s announcement of state revenue collections for September marked the end of a truly dismal quarter. Collections for the 1st quarter of FY ’10 were 29.5 percent below the first three months of FY ’09. The graph below shows that… Read more [More...]

Non-profits and advocates gather to size up budget situation

Last week, OK Policy convened a meeting of over 30 representatives of non-profit and advocacy organizations to discuss the state’s budget situation. We begin with a presentation on budget trends and outlooks, which can be viewed on our website; the… Read more [More...]

New Revenue Numbers: The long climb back

As you’ve no doubt already heard, the worst fears about state revenue collections in the beginning of the new fiscal year were confirmed yesterday with the release of July General Revenue (GR) collections. The Treasurer’s office announced that July revenues… 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...]