Topic: Budget & Tax

Lawmakers are not done asking agencies to do more with less (Capitol Updates)

By: Steve Lewis
August 21, 2015 // Updated: May 2, 2019
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.… Read more [More...]

Should Oklahoma put a tax on carbon?

By: Derek Wietelman
August 18, 2015 // Updated: May 2, 2019
Derek Wietelman is an OK Policy summer intern. He is an Oklahoma State University student pursuing a double major in statistics and political science, with minors in economics and environmental economics, politics, and policy. Last May, U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse… Read more [More...]

Oklahoma’s ‘three-legged stool’ of tax incentive reform is incomplete (Guest post: Ryan Gentzler)

By: Ryan Gentzler
July 9, 2015 // Updated: May 2, 2019
Ryan Gentzler is an OK Policy Research Fellow and a Research Associate with the Early Childhood Education Institute. He recently completed his Master of Public Administration degree at the University of Oklahoma. After years of stalled reforms on tax incentives… Read more [More...]

Funding shortfalls motivate finding waste… but also ending important services (Capitol Updates)

By: Steve Lewis
July 2, 2015 // Updated: May 2, 2019
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.… Read more [More...]

Two insider takes on the 2015 legislative session

By: Guest
July 1, 2015 // Updated: May 2, 2019
Editor’s note: We came across these two thoughtful takes on the 2015 session, with a particular emphasis on the budget, from Senate Republican Mike Mazzei and House Democrat Ben Loring. Their assessments offer some stark contrasts but also some surprising… Read more [More...]

Understanding Oklahoma’s new tax rates on oil and gas production

By: David Blatt
June 30, 2015 // Updated: May 2, 2019
With the start of the new fiscal year tomorrow (July 1), many new laws are set to take effect. Perhaps the most consequential new law is one passed last session, HB 2562, which extended and made permanent tax breaks for… Read more [More...]

Responsibility to fund Oklahoma services rests with “we the people” (Capitol Update)

By: Steve Lewis
June 26, 2015 // Updated: May 2, 2019
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.… Read more [More...]

Taking a little off the top

By: David Blatt
June 24, 2015 // Updated: May 1, 2019
This past session, as Oklahoma grappled with a $611 million budget shortfall, a lot was heard about off-the-top apportionments, or tax revenues that are allocated directly to various funds without legislative appropriation. In this year’s State of the State address,… Read more [More...]

Where are they now? Bills we followed this session (Part 2)

By: Gene Perry
June 22, 2015 // Updated: May 2, 2019
Last week on the blog, we talked about what happened with key bills related to education and criminal justice in this year’s legislative session. In this post, we’ll look at what happened around tax breaks, elections reform, and attempts to… Read more [More...]

The myth of state policy innovation (Guest Blog: David Schultz)

By: Guest
June 18, 2015 // Updated: May 2, 2019
David Schultz is a professor of political science at Hamline University. This article originally appeared in The Governing Institute website and is reposted with permission. Many state legislatures are not professional or full-time, or they lack extensive research staff to… Read more [More...]