Mar
30
This has been an exciting legislative session for those interested in government transparency. We’ve seen bills passed that would put school district spending on the State Department of Education’s website and another that would upgrade the state’s spending website to Open Books 2.0. But at the same time, we’ve seen the legislature balk at opening up and modernizing government over fears of identity theft.
Senate Bill 1753, for example, would prohibit the release of the dates of birth for state employees. The argument for the bill is that having someone’s date of birth can help steal their identity. The case against the bill is that when someone named John Doe is arrested for a crime and you know that there is a teacher named John Doe, you can easily tell if they are the same person by comparing the date of birth on the police record. The bill passed the Senate unanimously but since then, Senate President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee has said he would vote against it if given another chance. Here’s hoping he gets that chance and that he can convince 24 of his colleagues to do the same.
Similarly, the house voted against a House Bill 2318 that would greatly improve transparency by creating a system to deliver raw data feeds for information already available through the Open Records Act. You can read more about the arguments against the bill here, but generally speaking there were concerns again about identity theft. We feel those concerns are unfounded.
Oklahoma has a chance to be at the forefront of open government. The federal government’s Data.gov website shows that only a few states currently offer public access to data in this form. So it makes you wonder about identity theft rates in those states. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Trade Commission, the national average for identity theft crime rates is a little under 100 victims per 100,000 population. Only one of the states that provides raw data has an identity theft rate above the national average: California (139 victims per 100,000 population). Michigan (83.6), Massachusetts (83.2), Utah (64.9), Maine (47.3) and North Dakota (35.7) are all well below the national average for identity theft.
And if you look at the list of high-profile data breach cases, you will not find a single incident of someone getting information from a raw data dump from one of the states that allows it. The vast majority of data breaches involving governments involve stolen computers that had names and Social Security numbers on them.
It’s understandable that people are wary of technology’s role in identity theft. But it’s an important tool in making sure government is doing what it’s supposed to. Being able to sort through raw data electronically is key for the press and watchdog groups like OFRG. Oklahoma should be a leader in open government and transparency and lawmakers have a chance of doing that by defeating SB 1753 and finding a way to get the language of HB 2318 into another bill so it can pass.
Mar
29
Of the 41 states that tried to get federal funding in the Race to the Top program, Oklahoma finished 34th, meaning it won’t get a share of the money. If you read some of the comments posted to that Tulsa World story, you might think it’s proof that Oklahoma’s education system is broken and in need of more money.
But that’s not the case at all. If you look at the scores and comments from those that reviewed the state’s plan, you will see that Oklahoma was consistently scored low for “Ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charter schools and other innovative schools.” Oklahoma also scored poorly because it was only going to use the funds to try to turn around five low-performing schools per year instead of a larger program. And the state was also consistenly losing points in the area of “Great Teachers and Leaders” specifically the sections dealing with improving effectiveness of teachers and principals based on student performance.
Oklahoma lawmakers would be wise to focus efforts on improving those areas. Not so that the state can take part in the next round of tax dollars, but so that Oklahoma’s children can get a better education.
Mar
23
Broken promises
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With President Obama signing the health care bill today, a couple of his campaign promises were broken. The first was his promise that bills sent to him would be available for public viewing for five days before he signed them.
The second was his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. As Americans for Tax Reform points out, there are several provisions in the health care reform bill that amount to a tax increase.
Yesterday, Oklahoma House and Senate leaders came forward to ask Attorney General Drew Edmondson to join other states seeking to sue the federal government over provisions of the health care bill. Edmondson says he’s looking into it. He’d already joined some other state Attorneys General in opposing what is now called the Cornhusker Kickback.
It’s a shame that it would take legal action from the states to remedy the situation. But it’s more important that a solution to the health care problem be found that does not continue to grow the size of the federal government. As we’ve pointed out several times, Sen Tom Coburn has a plan that is far simpler to enact and will save, not cost, taxpayer dollars.
Mar
22
In an opinion piece published today in the Oklahoman, a member of the group supporting SQ 744 tries to paint the ballot measure as one that will increase transparency in school spending. It is true that SQ 744 would add the following language to the State Constitution:
The Education Oversight Board and the Office of Accountability shall publish an annual report on the expenditure of common education revenue, which shall include reports regarding the expenditures for classroom instruction and for administrative costs. The Education Oversight Board and the Office of Accountability shall also publish an annual report on student achievement results and the overall performance of common schools.
But it’s important to point out that two bills making their way through the Oklahoma legislature this session go above and beyond that transparency requirement. House Bill 3253 by Rep. Gus Blackwell (R-Goodwell) and Senate Bill 1633 by Sen. Randy Brogdon (R-Owasso) would require all spending to be reported on the State Department of Education’s website, including federal and local tax dollar expenditures.
So which do you think is more transparent: an annual report that collects dust on a bookshelf somewhere or a constantly updated database on a state agency’s website that allows you to see spending broken down by individual school district?
The cost of SQ 744 is about a billion dollars paid for by taking the money away from all other state agencies or increasing taxes or both. The legislative approach has a price tag of zero dollars.
If SQ 744 were truly transparent, it would have included a way to pay for it in the ballot question. But the teachers’ union knows SQ 744 would fail miserably if it included a 34% increase in income taxes or a 38% increase in sales taxes in the ballot language. So instead they just left that part out and hope voters won’t ask silly questions like “How do we pay for this?”
Mar
16
The next six weeks
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As the State Legislature pauses during Spring Break, it’s a good time to look ahead to what taxpayers should expect over the next six weeks. For starters, bills that passed in the house of origin will go through the committee process in the opposite house and then get another vote. The end of March is the end of another quarter, so new stimulus spending details need to be posted by April 10th. To date, only 34% of stimulus funds have been spent nationwide.
This is also a time that legislative leaders and the Governor’s office are hashing out budget details. The FY 2011 budget has to be passed by the end of session. The March revenue report showed a little more silver lining to the dark financial cloud, but the state is still facing a huge budget problem. The agreement reached to fill the FY 2010 shortfall left $150-million in the Rainy Day Fund which is supposed to remain there for FY 2012 and beyond. We need to make sure that the 2011 budget keeps that money safe for the future and concentrates on spending cuts.
The Governor’s budget relied on accounting gimmicks and new taxes and fees in order to limit spending cuts for 2011. Despite revenues falling 20% or more below expected levels, Governor Henry proposed cuts of only a half-percent to Common Education, Higher Education and Career Tech which combine to make up more than half of the state’s budget. Instead of creating new taxes on internet purchases, lawmakers need to go through agency budgets and find programs to cut.
We hope that a budget agreement can be reached soon, in order to give the legislature and the public time to review it and offer suggestions for changes. There is no doubt that it is not going to be an easy budget, but what lawmakers do with the FY 2011 budget will have a big impact on how the state recovers. If spending remains high it will be that much harder to fill the gap in FY 2012 when federal stimulus dollars will no longer be available.
Mar
12
Urban myths
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Earlier this week, Arnold Hamilton wrote a column titled Lip Service to Education in Urban Tulsa Weekly. We’ve copied his column with our response in bold type below.
Tired of the broken promises, the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, and other public school advocates joined forces to propose a constitutional amendment that would require state lawmakers to fund public education at the per-pupil average of surrounding states.
The pro-public school forces collected signatures from more than a quarter million registered voters to ensure State Question 744 appears on the November general election ballot. That’s almost twice as many signatures as required — powerful evidence that Oklahomans support their schools and want them improved.
Or, it’s powerful evidence that those who signed who were not teachers, were not told of all of the consequences of the bill. If someone is handed a petition and is told, “it’s to get more money spent on education” then they are more likely to sign it than if they are told the truth that “it gives more money to education, forcing either higher taxes or criminals let loose and more bridges left to crumble.”
Remarkably, though, if you listen to politicos, read the state’s newspapers and surf the Internet, you’d think the proposal is doomed, Oklahomans rising in opposition with a fervor normally reserved every October for a certain orange-clad football team from south of the Red River.
Republican legislative leaders and the Democratic governor? Opposed. GOP and Democratic gubernatorial candidates? Opposed. The State Chamber, the Farm Bureau, the highway contractors, some newspapers and even some teachers groups? All opposed.
You’d think SQ 744 has no chance of passing … but you’d be wrong.
Look no further than the recent Tulsa World/Oklahoma Poll for evidence: 61 percent of the 621 likely voters surveyed statewide support the proposal, only 23 percent oppose it and 16 percent were undecided or declined to answer.
Even more interesting: They expressed opposition (57 percent to 22 percent) to a second, stealth proposal, State Question 754, designed to nullify SQ 744. It was placed on the ballot by Republican lawmakers fearful the OEA-backed plan would be approved.
As Hamilton points out further down, nine months is a long time in politics. The wording of the poll question did not include any of the consequences of SQ 744, something we’re trying to make sure people know.
State voters may not know the particulars, but they know their schools don’t receive funding comparable to other states. They may not know, for example, that Arkansas spent $10,345 per pupil in 2008-09 compared to Oklahoma’s $8,006, but they know education is the key to a brighter future.
Voters may not know that Arkansas has 244 school districts, less than half of the 530+ Oklahoma has or that Arkansas’ state sales tax rate of 6% is 33% higher than Oklahoma’s and that its top income tax rate of 7% is 27% higher than Oklahoma’s.
And they know that despite offering lip service, state leaders, both Democrats and Republicans, historically haven’t delivered on public education. Instead, they melt beneath the sweet-nothings of well-heeled special interests that fill campaign coffers, yet demand tax breaks and other state incentives that limit tax dollars available for education and other worthy projects.
The intense opposition to SQ 744 is — first and foremost — about preserving political power and protecting special interests’ claim on state budget dollars. And it is full of hypocrisy.
The OEA isn’t a special interest group? And since SQ 744 would require cuts of 20% to all other state agencies to give nearly a billion dollars to Common Education, it would seem that DHS, the Department of Corrections or ODOT are not the special ones.
Now that they are in charge of the Legislature, Republicans are opposed to a constitutional mandate on education spending.
As are Democrats like Brad Henry, Jari Askins, Drew Edmondson, Andrew Rice, Scott Inman, Joe Dorman and many more.
But when they were a legislative minority, they championed State Question 640 — the constitutional amendment that makes it all but impossible to raise taxes, no matter how dire the emergency.
Republicans may have “championed” SQ 640, but the people approved it, so they decided it was in the state’s best interest to make it harder to raise taxes. Requiring a super-majority of lawmakers or a vote of the people to raise taxes is not all but impossible. But it does ensure that it would have to be an emergency situation for it to happen.
Several years ago, state highway contractors campaigned successfully for a proposal that guarantees they get a substantial cut of on excess cash in the state budget. Now they complain that SQ 744 would siphon away $850 million in state revenues, cutting into sorely needed monies for the state’s decrepit bridges (rated America’s worst) and substandard highways.
Maybe if the OEA had decided on a funding mechanism for SQ 744 instead of making it an unfunded mandate that will result in cuts to every state agency, it would have more support.
It also must be noted that some of the opposition to SQ 744 is about raw electoral politics. More than a few Republicans, backed by the State Chamber and corporate interests, have long schemed to destroy the teachers’ union, arguably the most powerful worker organization left in Oklahoma. They aren’t anti-public education, they’re anti-union. In their minds, defeating SQ 744 is a huge setback for OEA. Should SQ 744 be approved? The corporatists get the shakes even thinking about it.
Thank you for admitting that the OEA is a special interest group.
So why would Democrats, who are typically viewed as pro-union, pro-public education and thus stand to benefit from OEA support, oppose SQ 744 — especially gubernatorial contenders Drew Edmondson and Jari Askins?
Many reasonable politicos, both Democrats and Republicans, philosophically oppose constitutional spending mandates. They believe — and so do I — that we elected our representatives and send them to the Capitol to study the issues and make decisions, based both on the present and the future needs of the state. Earmarking 40 percent or more of every state budget dollar without room for debate is far from ideal public policy.
We’re glad we have you on the record opposing SQ 744!
But it’s laughable that so many state leaders who extolled the virtues of SQ 640 — wouldn’t it be prudent in the current fiscal crisis to review the tax structure, perhaps even raise some? — would be so flummoxed by SQ 744.
Is it ever a good idea to raise taxes during an economic downturn? This is exactly the kind of situation for which SQ 640 was enacted - to avoid knee-jerk reaction to tough times by using tax increases instead of cutting funding for projects that aren’t core governmental functions.
I don’t know whether SQ 744 will be approved in November. In politics, nine months is a lifetime. And I have no doubt powerful corporate interests will spend a boatload on advertising aimed at killing it.
And the OEA will have millions to spend on advertising in support of it, thanks in large part to the National Education Association.
More than a few times, though, Oklahoma voters have bowed their necks and taken matters into their own hands when lawmakers repeatedly failed to act. This may be one of those times.
After all, there’s no excuse for Oklahoma to commit far less for each student’s education than any surrounding state. If only Mississippi were in our region …
Before throwing another billion dollars at the problem, why don’t we first make sure that the dollars we are giving to education are being spent properly? When people hear about incidents like Skiatook Public Schools where nearly a million dollars is wasted on overpriced janitorial supplies and security systems instead of going to the classroom, why would they assume that spending more money would have a positive effect on education?
When taxpayers see that Oklahoma superintendents got a collective raise of over a million dollars, despite lower revenues that everyone knew was coming, why would we think that giving more money to schools would result in more students who can read at grade level?
The fact is that State Question 744 is an unfunded mandate that puts lawmakers in other states in charge of Oklahoma’s education spending. It would require tax increases of more than 30% or cuts to all other state agency budgets.
That means 8400 prisoners released, many of those medium security inmates, and eight prisons closed. It means massive tuition hikes at state colleges and universities with fewer class offerings, faculty layoffs and scholarship reductions. It means 197 bridges currently slated for replacement taken out of the eight-year construction plan, delaying much-needed repairs. It means longer waiting lists for mental health and substance abuse treatment services. That’s not lip service, that’s a real scenario for Oklahoma’s future - one that we don’t want to see happen.
For more information, check out www.stop744.com.
Mar
9
State Treasurer Scott Meacham reports today that for the first time since December 2008, state revenues came in above predicted levels.
But with those numbers come a lot of caveats. For starters, while revenues exceeded expectations, they were still below the levels in February of 2009. The difference is that the Board of Equalization had much lower expectations for this year.
Secondly, even with the overage and 10% across-the-board reductions, the state had to take another $85-million out of various cash reserve funds in order to make allocations to state agencies. This is on top of the $233-million taken in the six previous months, all of which has to be paid back by the end of June.
And delving deeper into the numbers, we see that oil and gas revenues made the biggest increase. While it’s good to see those revenues coming back up, it is a volatile source of funding that can’t be relied upon. While income taxes did produce nearly $20-million more than expected, it was offset by sales taxes which remain well below predictions.
It’s too early to say Oklahoma has hit bottom and is starting to rebound. That’s why it’s important to continue the effort to save state dollars. Even if revenues are above expectations for the rest of the year, Oklahoma is still in a deep hole.
Mar
8
Bill could find ways to save some Higher Education dollars
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A bill that passed unanimously in the Oklahoma House today could provide a much-needed review of a small section of Higher Education’s budget. House Bill 2610 by Rep. Guy Liebmann (R-Oklahoma City) would require that Higher Education vehicles fall under the supervision of Fleet Management in the Department of Central Services.
During the question and answer period on the House Floor, Rep. Paul Wesselhoft (R-Moore) pointed out that right now, lawmakers have no idea how many vehicles Higher Ed has or who is using them. With Fleet Management involved, there will be oversight and rules that higher education must follow.
It’s possible that Higher Ed is currently running its fleet as efficiently as possible and no changes will be needed. But the fact is we don’t know right now and HB 2610 will allow the legislature to see the details of how some of that money is being spent. More importantly, if efficiencies can be found, they will be enacted.
It was during last year’s legislative session that it was discovered that Higher Ed was spending $60-million on travel expenses, more than half of the entire state’s $100-million total. Providing some additional oversight of Higher Education spending is a good idea and can only serve to save state colleges and universities money that can reduce the need for tuition hikes.
Mar
5
Warren Buffett on health care
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He’s the second-richest man in the country and, according to data from OpenSecrets.org, he gave more than $15-thousand dollars to Democrats running for federal office in 2008 and zero to Republicans. Yet in a recent interview on CNBC, Warren Buffett called for the scrapping of the health care bill in the Senate:
I would be–if I were President Obama, I would just show this chart of what’s been happening and say this is the tapeworm that’s eating at American competitiveness. And I would say that one way or another, we’re going to attack costs, costs, costs, just like they talk about jobs, jobs, jobs in the…(unintelligible). It’s cost, cost, cost on this side. That’s a tough job. I mean, we’re spending maybe $2.3 trillion on health care in the United States, and every one of those dollars is going to somebody and they’re going to yell if that dollar becomes 90 cents or 80 cents. So it take–but I would–I would try to get a unified effort, say this is a national emergency to do something about this. We need the Republicans, we need the Democrats. We’re going to cut off all the kinds of things like the 800,000 special people in Florida or the Cornhusker kickback, as they called it, or the Louisiana Purchase, and we’re going to–we’re going to get rid of the nonsense. We’re just going to focus on costs and we’re not going to dream up 2,000 pages of other things. And I would say, as president, `I’m going to come back to you with something that’s going to do something about this, because we have to do it.’
And that’s an interesting statement because it’s basically what Sen. Coburn has been saying. Let’s scrap the Senate Bill and take the individual components that have bipartisan support and pass those. Buffett said later in the interview that the public has to be behind whatever reform comes out of Congress and they’re not behind this bill. A CNN survey finds that people are opposed to the specific bill in the Senate by a 3-1 margin, yet most people agree that some reforms are needed. If Congress and the President don’t listen to Buffett or Coburn, perhaps they’ll listen to the people.
Mar
3
Did You Know?
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We’d like to start a new feature on the OFRG blog where we occasionally list some facts that pertain to state government and how our tax dollars are spent. The “Did You Know?” entries will not have any analysis or opinion, just interesting facts that we hope will allow you to take a second look at state government. For example…
Did you know… that if you add up the number of school districts in Florida (67), Georgia( 187), Tennessee (140) and Virginia (132), the total (526) still doesn’t equal the number of districts in Oklahoma (531) even though the combined populations of those states is over 42-million while Oklahoma’s is about 3.6-million?
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