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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
Housing is out of reach for working Oklahomans, seniors and people with disabilities: The gap between wages and rent in Oklahoma continues to widen. For Oklahomans earning minimum wage — and for many seniors and people with disabilities — affording rent is nearly impossible. Without bold action from lawmakers, more Oklahomans will be forced to choose between housing, health care, food, and other essentials. [Sabine Brown / OK Policy]
Oklahoma Supreme Court stays HB 2783 over Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust Board terms (Capitol Update): There was an interesting ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court recently staying implementation of House Bill 2783, authored by the respective chairmen and vice chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees. The bill sought to strike statutory language providing for staggered terms for the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET) Fund. The TSET board authorizes expenditure each year from the earnings of the trust fund. [Steve Lewis / Capitol Update]
Policy Matters: Make community great again: In Oklahoma, community was once a way of life. Neighbors helped each other in big and small ways, from repairing fences and cooking meals to fundraising for schools and cleaning up after storms. Today, many Oklahomans tell me this spirit is missing. Even as we live close to others, many of us feel isolated. Too often, we’re being divided into camps and drawn into arguments over labels, forgetting the simple bargain we once honored: I show up for you, and you show up for me. [Shiloh Kantz / The Journal Record]
OK Policy in the News
Proposed HUD Timeline Puts Working Families At Risk Of Eviction: The federal government holds that Housing and Urban Development is supposed to be a temporary fix, not a permanent solution. However, housing experts in Oklahoma claim the proposed timeline does not adequately address the housing crisis. “Putting an arbitrary time limit on rental assistance doesn’t solve the root cause,” said Sabine Brown, Housing Senior Policy Analyst for Oklahoma Policy Institute. [Oklahoma Watch]
Cost-cutting efforts target public health, labeling some programs as wasteful: State and federal officials have targeted public health programs in efforts to trim what they call wasteful spending, focusing on pandemic-era funding that remained unused. But health care advocates have pushed back, pointing to Oklahoma’s low public health rankings and questioning why the state wasn’t able to find some use for the funds. Oklahoma receives more federal dollars for programming than taxpayers send in, according to the Oklahoma Policy Institute, a local think tank. [The Frontier]
State Question 781 Participation Grows: The Oklahoma Policy Institute, Healthy Minds Policy Initiative and Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform issued a joint report on the status of the County Community Safety Investment Fund on Aug. 8. The fund, aimed at allocating savings from reduced incarceration rates to support local diversion programs, was created via State Question 781 in 2016. [Oklahoma Watch]
- From OK Policy: Groundbreaking report reveals more than $200 million in savings from Oklahoma justice reform
Weekly What’s That
SQ 780 and SQ 781 were closely-related ballot initiatives approved by Oklahoma voters in 2016. SQ 780 reclassified simple drug possession and some minor property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. SQ 781 directed the Office of Management and Enterprise Services to calculate the savings to the state of these changes and to deposit that amount into a fund used by county governments to provide substance abuse and mental health services. Both measures involved statutory, rather than constitutional, changes.
SQ 780 went into effect on July 1, 2017 and had an immediate impact in reducing the number of felony filings in the state. In 2019, the Legislature passed HB 1269 making the provisions of SQ 780 retroactive, which allowed those convicted of felonies for crimes that became misdemeanors following passage of SQ 780 to apply to have their sentences commuted by the Pardon and Parole Board. An initial group of over 450 inmates had their sentences commuted by Governor Stitt in November 2019.
After several years when some legislators tried unsuccessfully to roll back provisions of SQ 780, the Legislature in 2023 passed HB 2153 that partially reverses SQ 780 by including mandatory jail time and optional diversion programs for multiple convictions involving simple possession of most drugs.
Until 2023, the Legislature consistently failed to adhere to the requirement of SQ 781 that the savings attributable to SQ 780 be made available to county governments for mental health and substance abuse services. However, in 2023, it passed a bill directing the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services to direct $12.5 million to the County Community Safety Investment Fund. In the first year that funds became available, 36 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties applied for funding that could be used to develop and implement a new mental health, substance abuse treatment, education, housing or diversion program.
As of 2023, the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency is tasked with calculating the annual savings attributable to SQ 780.
Look up more key terms to understand Oklahoma politics and government here.
Quote of the Week
“We don’t have a problem of people not working enough, we have a problem of rents rising faster than wages.”
– Sabine Brown, Housing Senior Policy Analyst at the Oklahoma Policy Institute, emphasizing that working families remain at risk of eviction and homelessness as federal rental assistance cuts fail to address the state’s underlying affordability crisis. [OK Policy]
Editorial of the Week
Opinion, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt: I’m a Red-State Mayor Who Knows the Value of Diversity
One of the things that makes America great is our collective resolve that every American should have an equal opportunity to succeed. We have never fully achieved this, but the Constitution gives us the tools to try, and we have used them. As a result, the arc of American history has bent toward greater equality for 249 years, passing through the Civil War, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, Obergefell v. Hodges and other milestones.
Of course, that progress is occasionally met with resistance. Oklahoma City, a purple city in a red state, where I serve as mayor, has witnessed Ku Klux Klan activities as well as successful sit-in movements.
As residents of a purple city in a red state, we’ve been hearing a lot of rhetoric that portrays the drive for equal opportunity as a form of reverse discrimination, that says we should not celebrate greater diversity as evidence that we have expanded opportunity, or even that we should not support Pride or other celebrations of our residents’ unique identities.
Sometimes this rhetoric is cloaked in patriotism, but it is really just repackaged bigotry, misogyny and racism. To cast equal opportunity as a threat rather than a goal is to move backward.
Numbers of the Week
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$1 trillion – The estimated downstream costs that counties and other subnational governments could face over the next 10 years as federal policy changes shift financial and administrative responsibilities onto them. [National Association of Counties]
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0.77% – Oklahoma’s effective property tax rate on owner-occupied housing, which ranked the state 25th nationally. In Oklahoma, only local governments (counties and cities) use property taxes. Property taxes fund local shared services such as schools, public safety, infrastructure, and more. [Tax Foundation]
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116 – The number of hours per week a minimum-wage worker in Oklahoma would need to work to afford a modest two-bedroom rental home. This means holding nearly three full-time jobs just to cover rent — before accounting for other basic living expenses. [National Low Income Housing Coalition]
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$498 – Average amount of their own money that public and private school teachers in Oklahoma spent on classroom supplies without reimbursement. This was higher than any of Oklahoma’s neighboring states. [Economic Policy Institute]
What We’re Reading
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Tough Challenges for Counties in a New Era of Fiscal Federalism: Counties face a fiscal squeeze as they are required to balance budgets each year amid rising costs and stagnant or shrinking revenues — often constrained by state policies and formula changes. With obligations to residents unchanged, local leaders must explore new revenue streams, reduce services, or pursue a combination of both. Achieving financial stability will require more than austerity; it demands innovative revenue solutions and strategic fiscal management. [Governing]
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The Most-Hated Tax—and What States Are Doing About It: Property taxes remain the most disliked form of taxation in the U.S., largely because they arrive in large lump sums, are tied to uncontrollable market-driven property values, and disproportionately burden homeowners as prices climb. To relieve this strain, states are implementing relief mechanisms such as homestead exemptions — which can reduce taxable values for individuals like seniors, veterans, or low-income residents — and circuit breaker programs that cap taxes when they become too high relative to income. [National Conference of State Legislatures]
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Minimum Wages and Housing Security in Oklahoma: Raising Oklahoma’s minimum wage to $15 per hour could lift up to 40,000 households out of cost-burdened rent levels and reduce severe cost burdens for another 32,000. This change is also projected to prevent up to 550 people from experiencing homelessness each year, easing pressure on shelter systems and emergency services while lowering public costs through fewer emergency room visits and reduced shelter use. [Scioto Analysis]
- U.S. investment in public education is at risk: Weak public K–12 education spending in the U.S. and the rising trend of Republican attacks on public schools threaten our children’s futures. The last decade has seen a flurry of high-quality studies that show that increasing the level of spending per pupil would have reliable effects in boosting student achievement and closing various achievement gaps. [Economic Policy Institute]
