OKPOLICY.ORG
Steve Lewis served as Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1989-1991. He currently practices law in Tulsa and represents clients at the Capitol. You can sign up on his website to receive the Capitol Updates newsletter by email.
Speaker Jeff Hickman and Senate President Pro Tempore Brian Bingman have announced that House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees are going to actually bring state agencies in during the session to review the consequences of a 3% to 9% cut in their budgets. Sen. Bingman said this was the first time in memory the subcommittees have given such scrutiny to agency budgets. In the past few years the subcommittees have held hearings during the interim or at the beginning of session to hear the agencies report what they did with last year’s money and what their budget request is for the coming year. I get the impression from some members that this is the last they hear from the agencies until the leadership announces a “budget deal” at the end of session. At that point the decisions have been made. It’s a good thing that the subcommittees will be more actively involved.
The 3% to 9% cuts apparently reflect the new budget gap of $611 million. Reading between the lines it looks as if no agencies will escape at least a small cut, and some will be looking at getting hammered with the budget axe. One has to wonder how this squares with the talk of teacher pay raises, the Pinnacle Plan and Corrections overcrowding. We probably should have seen this coming. It seems as though Oklahoma didn’t fall as far, and we recovered more quickly from the “great recession” than most other states because of our oil and gas resources. But now, with the cyclical nature of commodity pricing, we are going into something of a slump while the rest of the country seems to be on the verge of taking off.
This is beginning to look like the 1980s. It could get worse depending on how long oil prices stay down. The 1980s were preceded by some boom years in energy in which the state pumped up its investment in education and other state priorities. This slump is preceded by several years of budget cuts and by several tax breaks in gross production taxes and the state income tax. As the rest of the country was struggling we were able to struggle along with them while rewarding ourselves with tax cuts because of booming energy prices. If energy continues to struggle we may find we have eaten our dessert before dinner and the makings of a good dinner are scarce.
