Topic: Budget & Tax

ABCs of School Finance (Guest Post: Lori Smith)

By: Guest
January 12, 2015 // Updated: May 2, 2019
Lori Smith is the Chief Financial Officer for Edmond Public Schools. This post is excerpted from an Edmond Public School brochure, “20 Questions (and Answers) about School Finance”. What is State Aid? State Aid represents the funds that are appropriated… Read more [More...]

Tax cut trigger shoots Oklahoma deeper into hole

By: David Blatt
January 5, 2015 // Updated: May 1, 2019
Last month, the Board of Equalization certified that revenues will grow enough next year to trigger a cut in the state’s top income tax rate. At the same time, the Board determined that the state will have nearly $300 million… Read more [More...]

Statement: Allowing tax cut to trigger is supremely irresponsible

By: Gene Perry
December 18, 2014 // Updated: May 2, 2019
Oklahoma Policy Institute Executive Director David Blatt released the following statement in response to Oklahoma’s latest revenue estimates that under current law will trigger a tax cut in 2016: It is supremely irresponsible to move forward with an income tax… Read more [More...]

Upcoming Event: State Budget Summit featuring E.J. Dionne

By: David Blatt
December 15, 2014 // Updated: May 2, 2019
Although Oklahoma is now several years removed from the worst of the fiscal crisis that accompanied the Great Recession, the gap between the cost of providing basic public services and the revenues we collect to pay for them seems to… Read more [More...]

Education funding schemes no substitute for dealing with taxes

By: Steve Lewis
November 26, 2014 // 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...]

Legislature’s wandering budget hands get slapped again

By: David Blatt
November 25, 2014 // Updated: May 2, 2019
For the second time, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has struck down a provision of this year’s state budget, ruling that the legislature acted unconstitutionally when it pulled $5 million out of the State Health Department’s Trauma Care Assistance Fund… Read more [More...]

Managing budgets and expectations (Steve Lewis Capitol Updates)

By: Steve Lewis
November 21, 2014 // Updated: May 1, 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...]

To help kids, help parents

By: Gene Perry
November 17, 2014 // Updated: May 2, 2019
mother and child About 168,000 children age 5 and younger in Oklahoma live in low-income families (making less than 200 percent of the poverty threshold, or $47,000 for a family of four). Like most families in America, the parents of these young children … Read more [More...]

State workforce still at critically low levels

By: David Blatt
October 20, 2014 // Updated: May 1, 2019
Despite four years of solid economic growth, Oklahoma’s state budget has never recovered fully from the last recession. While total state appropriations are slightly above pre-downturn levels, the FY 2015 budget is $680 million, or 7.9 percent, below FY 2009… Read more [More...]

SQ 770 & 771 would expand property tax breaks for some veterans and their families

By: David Blatt
October 14, 2014 // Updated: May 2, 2019
After Oklahoma voters decided twenty state questions in 2010 and 2012, including several broad and contentious issues, this November’s ballot may seem anticlimactic. Oklahoma voters will have just three state questions to decide, none of which are especially momentous. Two… Read more [More...]