Gov. Fallin recently signed Senate Bill 1600 officially setting the next fiscal year’s appropriated budget. The new budget will spend $7.5 billion from Oklahoma taxpayers, an 11% increase from the previous year. When adjusting for inflation, this marks the highest appropriated budget since 2015—just before the decline in oil prices.

The Oklahoma State Department of Education is set to receive the largest appropriation, $2.9 billion, which is 39% of the state’s total appropriations. Much of this $480 million increase to education comes from House Bill 1010xx that was passed just before the teacher walkout began.

As OCPA has often noted, however, appropriations do not make up the entire state budget. Some good examples of this are the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education (CareerTech) and the Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OHCA), both of which received 11% increases in the new appropriated budget. Each of these agencies relies heavily on funds not included in the appropriations budget. In fiscal year 2017, CareerTech received $118 million in appropriations but had a total budget of $564 million. Likewise, OHCA had a total budget of $5.581 billion but only received $991 million in appropriations.

Other notable increases were to the Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission (22%) as it prepares for the impact State Question 792 will have on the sale of alcoholic beverages, and the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (26%) so that it can take over bond obligations from the Oklahoma Department of Commerce.

The picture below shows total fiscal year 2018 appropriations versus total fiscal year 2019 appropriations.