Articles

Actions speak louder than words, but what they tell us is not always obvious. What do our elected officials believe? What are they really trying to do? Here are four questions to ask as we watch the legislative process unfold.

Putting a veil around total education expenses is a step backward in the debate over total state spending. An honest debate on public education funding calls for more transparency, not less.

On Monday, Gov. Mary Fallin will deliver her final State of the State address to open the 2018 legislative session. For the governor in her final year in office, and for the Legislature in the second year of session, there’s plenty of unfinished business.

Oklahoma’s Supreme Court district boundaries have not changed since the 1960s. While people have moved around, those lines have stayed the same for half a century. This isn’t merely unfair—it also hurts the quality of our judiciary for basic reasons described by James Madison.

Oklahoma’s education system is enjoying near-record revenues. Unfortunately, as OCPA’s education data tool makes clear, too much of the money is cordoned off in silos.

Building on the the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Program for Children with Disabilities success—and with an eye toward breaking the intergenerational cycle of incarceration—lawmakers in 2018 should create a new program providing scholarships for the children of incarcerated parents.

In 2015 a very important piece of legislation, House Bill 1748, required Oklahoma state agencies to publicly report the amount of federal funding they receive and the strings attached to that money. The measure passed overwhelmingly in both chambers.

The time has come to reform TSET in two ways. First, new tobacco settlement dollars should be redirected to high-priority health care needs (rural hospitals, care for veterans, etc.). Second, TSET’s endowment should be reduced, capped, and limited to helping people quit smoking and to health care needs related to smoking (what most people thought TSET was about in the first place).

The legislature should repeal its zero-emission tax credit for all sources of zero-emission power, not just wind.