Sep
25
The second day of testimony at an interim study on the effects of State Question 744 on the state budget painted an apocalyptic picture of Oklahoma’s future: criminals roaming the streets, waiting lists twice as long for mental health and substance abuse treatment and colleges cancelling courses and laying off faculty and staff.
First to testify was the Oklahoma Council on Public Affairs. Their point is that the way the federal government calculates the cost of educating a child is flawed. For example, the tax dollars that go into the Teachers’ Retirement Fund are not included. Also, the number of students is determined by Average Daily Membership, not Average Daily Attendance. So apparently it still costs the state money to educate children who aren’t there. OCPA had an independent audit of education spending which came up with an average of $10,942 per child. That’s roughly 50% more than tuition at OU for a year, by the way.
It was pointed out that one possible solution for Oklahoma should SQ 744 pass is reducing the number of children in public schools. This could be done by offering a $4,000 voucher for students to attend a private school. Fewer students in public school would mean the average per pupil would go up with no extra money spent. Do you think that’s what OEA’s membership had in mind when its leadership proposed this scheme?
State Transportation Secretary Gary Ridley was the first agency head to talk about how he would deal with a 20% budget cut which would be needed to free up the money to pay for SQ 744’s mandate. Ridley says not only would ODOT be losing state dollars, but since those dollars are leveraged with federal money, it means $400-million taken out of the eight-year plan, enough to replace 200 crumbling bridges.
Commissioner Terri White with the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services says a 20% cut is the kind of thing she worries about at night. She says there would be two choices: affect the fewest people by cutting services to those that need the most expensive treatment or affect the most people by cutting lower-cost services that help prevent problems from becoming expensive. She says waiting lists for residential drug treatment, for example, would be “in the thousands” instead of the hundreds it is right now. And she says the drug court program which is one-quarter of the cost of incarceration, would have to be cut, increasing the prison population.
But that population would already be forced to decrease according to Neville Massey with the Department of Corrections. She says a 20% cut in funding would mean closing eight or nine prisons and releasing more than 8,000 criminals. And since Oklahoma doesn’t have that many low-security prisoners, it would mean some of those in medium-security facilities would be let loose. And if a crime wave results? Well unfortunately, the Department of Corrections would not be able to handle more prisoners.
The Health Care Authority is another agency where state cuts would lead to a loss of federal dollars. CEO Mike Fogarty says a 20% cut in state money would mean $196-million lost plus an additional $343-million in federal funds! So because the state would be forced to spend an additional $850-million on education, it would be losing $540-million in health care dollars alone! How could this possibly be a good thing for Oklahoma?
The Department of Public Safety said that a 20% cut to free up money for State Question 744 would mean over a hundred troopers taken off the streets and a similar number of civilian jobs lost. That means reducing the hours or even closing some driver’s test stations that are already dealing with large crowds. And according to DPS Commissioner Kevin Ward, there is “no doubt highways would not be safer.”
At the Department of Human Services, the effect of the cuts would be larger than in many agencies because some of the programs it has can’t be cut under federal law. Director Howard Hendrick says $95-million of the agency’s $485-million dollar budget would be off-limits, meaning that programs funded with the rest of the money would be cut more than 20%. He says the waiting list for developmentally disabled services would double, “not a pretty picture anybody wants for our state.”
Except, apparently, the OEA.
The final agency head to testify was Higher Ed Chancellor Glen Johnson. His rosy picture of a 20% cut would mean higher tuition, fewer course offerings and faculty and staff layoffs. There would be less money for scholarships, no money for student jobs and buildings paid for with bonds issued in 2005 would have no money for operating them.
As Appropriations and Budget Chairman Ken Miller pointed out in his closing statements, if OEA had included a tax increase to pay for State Question 744, there’s no way it would pass. And if the question included whether voters would approve a 20% cut across-the-board for all agencies except education to pay for it, it would fail miserably.
Thanks to Rep. Leslie Osborn and Rep. Randy McDaniel for requesting this interim study. We hope it provides enough information for Oklahoma voters so they will see the true cost of State Question 744 and realize that it provides the worst possible future for the state.
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4 Responses to “Bleak future predicted if State Question 744 passes”
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[...] Bleak future predicted if State Question 744 passes : Oklahomans … [...]
You know what gets me is that all you braniacs that seem to have ALL the answers sure can’t come up with anything more clever than “40% tax increases or 20% agency cuts”….is this all you can come up with to generate revenues???? Seriously, what do they teach these days in public finance. Here’s the box and you and the other clowns in it!
[...] an interim study last year on SQ 744, Transportation Secretary Gary Ridley testified that a 20% cut to his agency would mean a loss of $400-million because federal matching funds would [...]
My concern is that the State Q sounds good to the uninformed public. “I like education. It doesn’t raise taxes. OK.” These same people will be upset when they realize the effects too late. Also, I’ve heard the NEA has poured millions of dollars into Oklahoma to fund a “Vote Yes” campaign, but the NO side is not an organized union with millions at their command. We will have the uninformed and the propaganda informed voting YES on a disasterous bill.