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The Weekly Wonk is a summary of Oklahoma Policy Institute’s events, publications, blog posts, and coverage. 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 on the OK Policy blog, we explained why claims that uninsured Oklahomans stuck in the “coverage crater” can simply to get a job to get health insurance aren’t based in reality. We’ve written before about the “coverage crater,” people who don’t earn enough to qualify for subsidies on the online marketplace but earn too much for traditional Medicaid.
We urged Gov. Fallin to sign HB 2625, which would ease mandatory retention requirements for students who did not pass the third-grade state reading exam. In a guest post, OK Policy Research Fellow Ryan Miskell suggested a better way to understand and improve school performance.
We called for an end to the tax break for horizontal drilling and explained why the tax break has outlived its usefulness. Previously, an infographic and video from Together Oklahoma discussed what the tax break is costing Oklahoma.
In his Journal Record column, Executive Director David Blatt suggested that legislators in favor of the tax break for drilling should remember that they work for the people of the state of Oklahoma, and not for out-of-state shareholders. OK Policy board member and University of Tulsa Vice President Susan Neal wrote in the Tulsa World that by underfunding education, Oklahoma is choosing to be cheap now instead of valuable later.
OK Policy is accepting applications to our second annual Summer Policy Institute (SPI), a three-day crash course on Oklahoma’s policy landscape, featuring speakers and panels on a wide range of state policy issues for college students! Applications will be accepted through Friday, May 30th. Click here to apply.
Numbers of the Day
- 7,970 – Number of Oklahoma third-graders who may be retained for scoring ‘unsatisfactory’ on high-stakes reading tests.
- 916 – Oklahoma’s death rate per 100,000 people, 4th highest in the nation.
- 74% – Employment rate for prime-age workers (for 25- to 54-year-olds) in Oklahoma, 12th lowest in the nation.
- $5,000 – Average annual cost for a drug court participant in Oklahoma, compared to $19,000 per year for prison inmates.
- 17.5% – Percentage of inmates at Mabel Bassett Correctional Facility, an Oklahoma women’s prison, who reported being sexually assaulted while incarcerated, the highest percentage at any prison in the US.
Policy Notes
- Vox describes how the United States lags behind the rest of the world in policies supporting working mothers.
- Brookings argues for why we need a broader understanding of “infrastructure” jobs.
- America’s low-income welfare system no longer provides significant help for single parents, childless adults and anyone who’s out of work, according to Wonkblog.
- Businessweek discusses how the Affordable Care Act triggered $1.6 billion in insurance rebates to consumers.
- The Washington Post reports that Indiana’s conservative governor has agreed to expand Medicaid in his state.
