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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
You shouldn’t have to touch a hot stove twice: Triggered tax cuts are bad for Oklahoma: Triggered tax cuts are a gimmick used by current legislators to gain political clout without having to make the tough financial decisions required of the offices to which they were elected. However, Oklahoma’s recent history and the experiences of other states show the harm triggered cuts inflict. This is the opposite of fiscally responsible stewardship of our tax dollars. [Aanahita Ervin / OK Policy]
Tribal-State Policy 101: What is Tribal sovereignty?: In order to better understand how the State of Oklahoma and Tribal Nations interact, it’s vital to first understand what tribal sovereignty means. Sovereignty is the authority of a self-governing group of people who can determine their own interests. Tribal sovereignty simply extends this concept to every federally recognized Tribal Nation. [Vivian Morris / OK Policy]
Statement: Gov.’s veto of SB 128 rejects bipartisan solution that would have helped landlords and kept Oklahomans in their homes: Right now, large corporate landlords and bad actors can exploit Oklahoma’s eviction laws to extract extra revenue from their tenants. Under the current system, landlords are able to bounce tenants on the street in under two weeks. This is almost no time to pay back rent, no time to ask off work and find child care, and no time to find a lawyer or prepare for court. And, as housing costs rise faster than wages, more families are falling behind. SB 128 wouldn’t have stopped evictions — it just would have slowed the clock. That’s not radical. That’s meeting the needs of everyday Oklahomans. [Sabine Brown / OK Policy]
Silence in the face of injustice puts each of us at risk (Commentary): Being an immigrant does not give the government carte blanche to violate people’s constitutional rights, human rights, and basic decency. We cannot use immigration status to justify authoritarian repression, violation of due process, and punishment of our immigrant friends and neighbors for what is ultimately Congress’s decades of failure to create pathways to citizenship and fix our long-broken immigration system. [Gabriela Ramirez-Perez / OK Policy]
Policy Matters: We all do better when we all do better: It’s easy to focus on what’s right in front of us — our own families, homes, and needs. But if we want Oklahoma to truly thrive, we must look beyond our own fence line and recognize this simple truth: when our neighbors do better, we all do better. [Shiloh Kantz / The Journal Record]
Supreme Court, Oklahoma lawmakers weigh church-state boundaries (Capitol Update): While the legislature was plowing its way through multiple bills toward this week’s deadline for floor passage of bills originating in the opposite chamber, issues of private religious faith in the public sector worked their way toward a conclusion. It has been a cardinal rule that public funding of private schools is prohibited by the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. [Steve Lewis / Capitol Update]
OK Policy in the News
Oklahoma Agencies Publish Private School Tax Credit Recipients Under Transparency Law: Shiloh Kantz, executive director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute, said at a minimum, lawmakers should put additional accountability measures into the Parental Choice Tax Credit program. “We got told this program will uplift educational outcomes, that it offers families educational choice and opportunity through that choice,” Kantz said. “But really it just rewards those people who can already afford private education, and it just leaves our public school students further behind, especially in a state where one in five kids live in poverty.” [Oklahoma Watch]
Most Private School Tax Credit recipients came from families making $75K+: New Tax Commission numbers released this week show most recipients approved for the Parental Choice Tax Credit were awarded to families earning above average income. The total amount approved was $236 million with a cap of $250 million. Oklahoma Policy Institute first reported the findings earlier this week and found that families earning more than $250k/year made up more than 1 in 4 recipients. [KFOR]
- From the OK Policy archive: Private school tax credits will give everyone’s taxes to people who don’t need our help (2023)
Weekly What’s That
To find the engrossed version of a bill, go to the Legislature’s website, click on Legislation, select Basic Bill Search, enter the bill number (make sure to select the correct session and include HB for a House Bill or SB for a Senate Bill), and choose the “Versions” tab.
Look up more key terms to understand Oklahoma politics and government here.
Quote of the Week
“A bill backed by Senate Education Committee Chair Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, to give teachers another raise to help address our critical shortage is being shelved. More important to legislators, it seems, is making sure enough money is available for a small percentage cut in the state income-tax rate that won’t be of much help to average Oklahomans.”
– The Oklahoman editorial board, responding to lawmakers shelving a teacher pay raise bill, in addition to state agency budget increases and funding for other public services, in favor of tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthiest Oklahomans. [The Oklahoman Editorial Board]
Editorial of the Week
Opinion: Will lawmakers stand up to Gov. Stitt’s vetoes?
Like a schoolyard bully, Gov. Kevin Stitt this week dared the Legislature to punch back.
He vetoed three common-sense bills that sailed through both chambers because … why? He could? He wanted to show legislators who’s boss? He cares little about the plight of the least among us?
The governor, of course, offered “reasons” he rejected measures that would have expanded access to breast cancer screening, funded an OSBI liaison for cases involving missing or murdered Indigenous people, and extended briefly the timeline for renters facing eviction.
But all rang hollow. Consider his logic for rejecting House Bill 1389 that would have required health insurance cover breast ultrasounds for those at higher risk of breast cancer.
“While early detection and access to care are critical priorities,” Stitt said, “this legislation imposes new and costly insurance mandates on private health plans that will ultimately raise insurance premiums for working families and small businesses.”
Hmmm … so mandating coverage that could identify breast cancer earlier, reduce long-term treatment costs and save lives is a no-go for a governor who fears insurance rates will go up?
Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond took aim at Stitt’s logic in an X post: “The next time you or a loved one is denied coverage for a mammogram, be sure to thank @GovStitt. He vetoed a bipartisan bill that would force insurance companies to cover this life-saving procedure. The health companies are celebrating – are you?”
HB 1389 was the work of Tulsa Democratic Rep. Melissa Provenzano, who recently was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Midwest City Republican Sen. Brenda Stanley. The House approved it 95-0; the Senate 34-11, though opposition came entirely from Freedumb Caucus types.
The other two measures – House Bill 1137 which would have funded a state liaison in cases involving missing or murdered Indigenous people, and Senate Bill 128 which would have given struggling renters five extra days to keep their homes or secure shelter – also commanded strong bipartisan support.
HB 1137, named Ida’s Law in honor of a Cheyenne and Arapaho woman who disappeared in 2015, passed the House 83-0 and the Senate 42-1 – the one negative vote being Shawnee Sen. Shane Jett, a once-thoughtful, principled House member whose descent into the Tin Foil world still baffles.
Remarkably, Stitt issued his veto on National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day. Was he unaware? Politically tone deaf? Or was it another at Oklahoma’s tribal nations with whom he’s battled frequently over his seven years in office?
[Read more of this op-ed by Arnold Hamilton in The Journal Record]
Numbers of the Week
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79% – Four-in-five (79 percent) SNAP households included either a child, an elderly individual, or a nonelderly individual with a disability. SNAP is the nation’s largest food assistance program. [U.S. Department of Agriculture]
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1 in 4 – For the 2025-26 school year, more than 1 in 4 approved recipients (25.7%) for Oklahoma’s private school tax credit/voucher earned more than $250,000 per year. [Oklahoma Tax Commission]
- 14,846 – Number of Oklahoma children enrolled in The Head Start program that provides early education and comprehensive services to children and families in greatest need to prepare them for success in school and later in life. Oklahoma had the nation’s 18th highest head start enrollment. [U.S. Office of Head Start]
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$921 million – State agencies in Oklahoma at the beginning of this year said they needed an extra $921 million in the coming year to deliver its services to the people of Oklahoma. [News 9]
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92% – A report from the Oklahoma Tax Commission shows that 92% of private school tax credit recipients already had children in private schools. [KOCO]
- From Oklahoma Tax Commission: Parental Choice Tax Credit report for the 2025-2026 school year
What We’re Reading
- Worsening SNAP’s Harsh Work Requirement Would Take Food Assistance Away From Millions of Low-Income People: As Republican lawmakers draft legislation to enact the deep cuts called for in their budget resolution, it appears increasingly likely that proposals to make SNAP’s existing harsh work requirement broader and more punitive will be included. This could take food away from millions of people in low-income households who are struggling to find steady work or who face substantial barriers to employment, including families with children — despite some lawmakers falsely claiming this policy would not cut food assistance benefits. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]
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The five-alarm fire that public education is facing: Public schools remain one of the best tools we still have to build a prosperous, equitable country. Nearly 90% of all U.S. students attend public schools. The Trump administration, implementing ideas right out of Project 2025, is defunding public education to the point that it doesn’t work. Their “fix”? Private school vouchers as a solution to a problem of their own making. [Economic Policy Institute]
- Dismantling the Head Start Program Will Hurt Rural Families: The White House plans to defund a federal program supporting over 3,000 childcare centers serving many rural families across the country. Over one million kids and their working parents could face hardship finding replacement care. [The Daily Yonder]
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Growing Trend to Phase in or Trigger State Tax Cuts Is Irresponsible, Skirts Accountability: Policymakers in many state capitols are pushing irresponsible plans for automatic, deep, and costly income tax cuts to be implemented several years after their enactment — obscuring the effect of tax changes that primarily benefit wealthy households and corporations but ultimately damage most people and communities. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]
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Oklahoma tax triggers well-intended, but lack economic sense (2016): What we’ve learned from the modern income tax cutting era is that triggers don’t make economic sense. They change a rate more or less permanently, in one direction (down), but there’s no provision for triggering a rate increase when the times call for it. [The Oklahoman Editorial Board Archive]
- From OK Policy: Tax triggers are a preferred vehicle for lawmakers to achieve the governor’s stated goal of eliminating the state’s income tax. But this so-called “path to zero” is a treacherous road.
