OKPOLICY.ORG
What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.
This week at OK Policy, we posted a guest blog that argued that tax credits for the Oklahoma Capital Investment Board (OCIB) are a failed and costly experiment. Authored by Senator Tom Adelson, former State Treasurer Scott Meacham, and director of the Oklahoma Office of State Finance, Preston Doerflinger, the post revealed that the OCIB has invested tens of millions of Oklahoma tax dollars in start-up companies located out of state.
Also this week, we argued against using Utah as a model for developing Oklahoma’s health insurance exchange, a major requirement of the new federal health care law. We completed and posted our comprehensive analysis of how Oklahoma supports early childhood health and education through federal, state, local, and private funds. Yesterday’s blog featured a guest post that probes the values underlying our expectations about health care in the United States.
OK Policy Director David Blatt testified to the Task Force on Comprehensive Tax Reform this week. Click here to view his presentation and here to read coverage of the meeting from NewsOK.com. OK Policy’s Director was also quoted this week in a Tulsa World article about the first legislative interim study meeting of the Joint Committee on the Federal Health Care Law.
In the Know, Policy Notes
- The new Census poverty numbers show the poverty rate is the second highest it has been in 45 years, with record numbers of Americans without health insurance and falling into deep poverty.
- Health economists at RAND show that increases in average gross annual income over the past decade were almost entirely offset by rising health care costs.
- 40 percent – Percentage of Oklahoma adults who answered “yes” to having at least one alcoholic drink in the past 30 days, 2008
- 5th – Oklahoma’s rank in average weekly wage growth in 2010; the state’s average weekly wage grew 4.5 percent between Dec. 2009 and 2010, to $797
- 11,906 – Number of Oklahoma middle and high school students who were not promoted to the next grade level, 2008-2009
- 25.8 percent – Percentage of Oklahoma businesses owned by women, compared to 28.8 percent nationally in 2007
- 11,600 – Miles of shoreline in Oklahoma – more than the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf coasts of the U.S. combined.
