Tax increases help cover up problems
This spring, Terry Cline, Gov. Mary Fallin’s then-secretary of health, berated me for refusing to vote for tax increases. Last week, Cline was forced to resign when apparent fraud and/or mismanagement was uncovered at the Department of Health.
This makes one wonder: If we had passed all the tax increases during the 2017 session, would this corruption have remained hidden? I suspect so. The additional money would have filled accounts emptied by mismanagement.
I suspect we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg of exposing corruption in state spending, because state agencies haven’t been independently audited in years!
State government insiders are lying to those who serve vulnerable Oklahomans, telling them that tax increases are necessary to preserve services, when there is enough available cash to plug the current $214 million gap without any tax increase. These lies cause needless anxiety to the vulnerable, causing them to pressure legislators for tax increases.
Perhaps now we are seeing the real reason for the increasingly desperate attempts by government insiders to raise your taxes. The insiders need tax increases to cover up the corruption.
The insiders have raised taxes by $500 million these past two years. Instead of more tax increases, we should audit state agencies to expose corruption and waste. Even before auditing, we can identify more than enough potential savings to fill the current gap, cover next year’s expected shortfall, and raise teacher pay. Here’s a sampling:
• Roll back wind subsidies. Over a billion of your tax dollars have subsidized corporate welfare for huge wind companies, often foreign-owned, which provide almost no jobs. (By contrast, the oil and gas industry employs over 150,000 and pays 25 percent of all Oklahoma taxes).
• Trim university administration costs. Oklahoma’s universities have administrative costs 70 percent higher than the national average. Reducing administration to the national average saves $374 million annually.
• Shift more education dollars to teachers. Who received the money from House Bill 1017 and the lottery that “saved” education? Administrators and other non-teacher costs. Rolling back this noninstructional staffing surge saves $373 million annually, to raise teacher pay by $8,000.
• Increase low-income scholarships. A recent study by Oklahoma City University shows every $1 spent on the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit leverages private donations to save $1.24 for the state budget, and produces $2.58 for education. Increasing the cap on this credit saves taxpayers millions and helps low-income children.
• Reserve TSET funds for Medicaid. Reserving the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust for Medicaid saves at least $85 million annually.
• Criminal justice reform. I’m tough on crime — I prosecuted terrorists for the Army in Iraq. Let’s be tough on crime in a cost-efficient way. Too many Oklahomans are jailed for what amounts to debt collection, often for minor offenses.
If we raise taxes now, we will never expose the corruption or cure the state’s spending addiction. Should we cut waste first? Or raise taxes? Please let me know at www.okhouse.gov/Members/ Default.aspx.