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What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk shares our most recent publications and other resources to help you stay informed about Oklahoma. Numbers of the Day and Policy Notes are from our daily news briefing, In The Know. Click here to subscribe to In The Know.
This Week from OK Policy
Statement: OK Policy responds to governor’s misleading comments on SB 675: As the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, I wish to clarify the inaccuracies in Gov. Stitt’s recent remarks about the defeat of Senate Bill 675. [Full statement from Shiloh Kantz / OK Policy]
Crossover week, special election results lead up to impending committee, floor deadlines (Capitol Update): During the lull in legislative action in “crossover” week last week, a bit of politics filled the void. Crossover week is the week after floor deadlines during which House bills that remain alive officially move to the Senate, and Senate bills move to the House. Next week, the committee process will begin, aimed at hearing bills in committee so they can be considered for floor action. [Steve Lewis / Capitol Update]
Policy Matters: Without proof, efficiency is just politics dressed up like progress: Lately, the overused buzzword in political circles is “efficiency.” Politicians say they want to cut waste and save taxpayer money. But here’s the catch: being efficient isn’t the same as being effective. [Shiloh Kantz / The Journal Record]
OK Policy in the News
Raising the minimum wage in Oklahoma could help with affordable housing: Oklahoma has not seen an increase in minimum wage since 2009. According to the Oklahoma Policy Institute, rent in Oklahoma has risen by 60 percent. This has resulted in an increase in eviction filings and homelessness. The Oklahoma Policy Institute believes State Question 832 could help with this issue. [KFOR]
Tribal leaders in Oklahoma flag OTA data collection bill as sovereignty infringement: Multiple tribal representatives in Oklahoma are raising concerns over a new bill, arguing that it infringes on tribal and data sovereignty. Senate Bill 675 would allow the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority to access the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Telecommunications Systems network — or OLETS, a program of the Department of Public Safety — to help ensure the OTA receives its toll money. [KOSU]
Weekly What’s That
Due process ensures that the federal and state governments must treat all individuals fairly. The constitutions for both the United States and Oklahoma guarantee that the government can not deprive someone of life, liberty, or property without following a fair and impartial process. This guarantee applies to everyone, regardless of citizenship.
There are two main types of due process: procedural due process and substantive due process. Procedural due process is intended to make sure the government acts fairly, while substantive due process ensures the government’s rules themselves are fair. This piece focuses on the former, because of its prevalence in day-to-day interactions with the government.
Procedural due process focuses on the steps and procedures the government must follow before it can deprive someone of their life, liberty, or property. The main ways the government can deprive an individual of these things are through the criminal and civil legal processes.
Procedural due process requires at least three things: notice, a hearing, and an impartial tribunal. In criminal cases, this might look like a formal notice of the charges against the defendant, a fair trial with adequate representation, and an impartial jury of the defendant’s peers. Without these protections, the government could incarcerate someone without proving that they committed a crime in the first place. Immigration and deportation are civil, not criminal issues. Even so, individuals facing removal are guaranteed procedural due process rights, which include proper notice, and a chance for a hearing before an impartial tribunal. Procedural due process exists to prevent government overreach and ensure it acts fairly and impartially.
Look up more key terms to understand Oklahoma politics and government here.
Quote of the Week
“Wouldn’t we be better off to allow the government-to-government solution where we have agreement, as opposed to us trying to force them to do things our way.”
– Rep. Danny Williams, R-Seminole, saying Tribes are diligently working with the state on compacts related to the turnpikes in “good faith.” [Oklahoma Voice]
Editorial of the Week
Opinion: The math behind Stitt’s half and a path plan does not add up
By now, most everyone in Oklahoma has seen the ads for the governor’s plan to cut the income tax .5% each year until we get to 0% — or his “half and a path” plan. But what does that really mean for Oklahomans?
For starters, we know that an across-the-board income tax cut does not benefit everyday working Oklahomans, but instead benefits the wealthiest Oklahomans. Full elimination of the income tax would actually raise taxes for our lowest-income earners and disproportionately benefit our highest-income earners.
According to Oklahoma Policy Institute, a 0.5-percent cut to Oklahoma’s personal income tax cut would reduce state revenue by an estimated $660 million annually when fully implemented.
Aside from that, about a third of Oklahoma’s general revenue is attributed to income tax revenue. This means a cut to the income tax would be a cut for state funding for services Oklahomans need, like public education, health care and infrastructure.
Other states that have already implemented a similar income tax cut are facing serious budget shortfalls and the threat of more cuts being made to core services.
An across-the-board income tax cut is a bad idea, but particularly for the next few years while millions of federal dollars are hanging in the balance. Many state agencies are reaching out to me, concerned about the future of their services with funding no longer being certain, and I don’t blame them. We should be doing more to work with our congressional delegation to protect state agencies when we know about half of our state’s funding comes from federal grants. Instead, the governor is focused on making life even easier for the wealthiest people in Oklahoma.
[Read the full op-ed by House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson (Oklahoma City) from Oklahoma Gazette]
Numbers of the Day
- 15.9% – Oklahoma’s poverty rate in 2023, which was the fifth highest among southern states and higher than the national average of 12.5%. [Economic Policy Institute]
- 11% – Share of school-aged children in Oklahoma who live in a household with at least one noncitizen adult. [KFF]
- 104% – The Trump administration began levying a 104% tariff against goods imported from China starting Wednesday, as part of its trade war to create more trade balance. a week after the president used his emergency powers to unveil new import taxes on products from nearly every country around the world. China has since increased its reciprocal tariffs to 84%. [ABC News]
- 56.1% – Federal Medicaid funding accounted for 56.1 percent of all federal funding included in state budgets last year. [National Association of State Budget Officers]
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151,000 -In Oklahoma, 151,000 seniors (22.4%) live at least 45 miles roundtrip from their nearest Social Security field office. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]
What We’re Reading
- The ongoing influence of slavery and Jim Crow means high poverty rates and low economic mobility in the South: Efforts to continue exploiting Black workers led to racist anti-worker policies that continue to maintain high rates of poverty, low economic mobility, and high levels of inequality for workers of all racial and ethnic backgrounds in most Southern states. [Economic Policy Institute]
- Potential Impacts of Increased Immigration Enforcement on School Attendance and Funding: Research shows that children of immigrants attain higher educational outcomes than the children of U.S.-born parent(s), play an outsized role in the U.S. health care workforce, and contribute more in taxes on average than the rest of the U.S.-born population. Actions being undertaken by the federal government to restrict immigration, including attempts to end birthright citizenship, rescission of protections from immigration enforcement in schools, and plans to carry out mass deportation, could negatively impact children living in immigrant families and have longer-term ramifications for the U.S. workforce and economy. [KFF]
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Federal Reports Show Path to Youth Justice Reform: Recent federal reports show the many opportunities to meet the needs of youth and families through a Continuum of Care model, a vision that provides a variety of diversion strategies and community-based interventions that prevent our children and adolescents from becoming more deeply involved in the formal justice system. [The Sentencing Project]
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Shifting Federal Costs for Food Assistance, Health Care, Other Priorities to States Would Cause Widespread Harm: House and Senate Republicans are working overtime to rush through a federal budget plan that would cut off large portions of federal funding for food assistance, health care, and other vital programs while requiring states and localities to pick up more of the tab. If adopted, the plans — which also include trillions of dollars in tax cuts heavily tilted toward the wealthy — would in effect force states to take health care and food assistance away from millions of people. The plans also threaten cuts to other state-supported services that people count on, especially people with low incomes. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]
- Revenue “Triggers” for State Tax Cuts Provide Illusion of Fiscal Responsibility: “Triggered” tax cuts — like other tax cuts enacted with a significantly delayed effective date — are sometimes portrayed as fiscally responsible, they are nothing of the sort. Lawmakers enacting them typically have no idea if they will be affordable or desirable when they take effect, and they can cause deep and lasting damage to a state’s ability to invest in its people and communities. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]
