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.
Legislators likely spent some time this week hearing from constituents and voices from various perspectives about how well or poorly they did in writing this year’s budget. Many feel they made a mistake by allowing a tax cut to go into effect on January 1 that caused $57 million of the state’s budget’s shortfall. A full year of the revenue cut will cause a larger problem for next year’s legislature. $57 million could have paid for a $1,000 pay raise for teachers, or it could have replaced a substantial amount of county road and bridge funding that was rolled into the general budget for other agencies, just to name a couple of possibilities.
On the other hand legislators no doubt heard from many important voices in their constituencies who condemned their missed opportunity to make sweeping budget cuts and “right size” government. This, despite the fact that public education in Oklahoma has been cut more than any other state since 2008, and many state agencies have lost around a quarter of their budgets. Even the agencies that received a small increase this year, for the most part are actually looking at less funding because of increases in costs and demand for services and changes in federal funding.
At least these two points of view have some internal consistency. There are those who think state government has an important role in providing a good quality of life for its citizens, protecting the vulnerable and providing a hand up to those in need. To them, simultaneous tax and budget cuts, and bigger budget cuts than necessary don’t make sense. Then there are those who feel government only takes from some to give to others, and that anything more than “core services” is waste. Given the opportunity to attack this waste they were disappointed that legislators found a way to avoid more drastic cuts.
The critics I find the most interesting are those who would have it both ways. They’re against “waste” and feel less taxes and more budget cuts are always the best answer, but then they are opposed to the particular budget cuts the legislature decided to make. Most responsible legislators realize they’re not going to make everyone happy. People just have different points of view. But many legislators this week probably spent at least a little time thinking, without saying, there has to be a special place in hell for people who want to have it both ways.
