State budget sent to Fallin
Lawmakers gave final approval Friday to a $7.6 billion budget that will fund Oklahoma’s government for the next year and cover pay hikes for teachers and state employees.
If Gov. Mary Fallin signs Senate Bill 1600, the budget will go into effect July 1. At a news conference on Thursday, Fallin praised the budget deal and said she hoped it would reach her desk soon.
The bill includes a nearly 20 percent boost in education spending, to $2.9 billion.
Most of the new money will pay for higher teacher salaries that lawmakers approved in special session.
Most agencies will receive more money in appropriations than they did last year, including health care, corrections and public safety departments.
It’s remarkable that lawmakers adopted a state budget so early in session.
Negotiations typically drag on for months and leave lawmakers voting on billions of dollars of spending priorities the last days of session.
Last year, an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that struck down an unconstitutional cigarette fee left the state without a fully funded budget for six months. The House spent four hours questioning and debating this year’s budget bill before approving it by a mostly party-line vote of 63-31.
Debate allowed lawmakers to craft their campaign-season messages.
For Republicans, the common theme was that the budget isn’t perfect,but it’s the best they’ve seen because it contains no agency spending cuts.
Democrats latched onto that claim, arguing that years of budget cuts cannot be undone with a single year of positive spending growth.
“If you’re two-feet deep in a sewer and you take one step forward, your situation has not greatly improved,” said Tulsa Democrat Eric Proctor. “You’re still two-feet deep in a sewer.”
State Rep. Forrest Bennett, D-Oklahoma City, criticized House leadership for boasting about the budget while planning an early departure from the Capitol.
The session must end on or before May 25, but both the House and Senate hope to finish their work by May 4.
“We should not be patting ourselves on the back and walking away with more work to be done,” Bennett said, noting that the budget doesn’t restore dedicated funding for community health centers.
The Oklahoma Ethics
Commission publicly criticized the budget and its reliance on appropriating money from agency accounts known as revolving funds.
The funds allow agencies to save money year after year for priorities outside the appropriation process.
Criticism from the Ethics Commission was surprising because it generally keeps a low profile at the state Capitol.
The Ethics Commission requested $3,354,000 in appropriations this year to bring its funding closer to comparable states, but lawmakers only sent the agency $710,000 to issue and monitor candidate campaign finance documents.
“The people of Oklahoma did not intend the
commission to be a selffunding agency,” Executive Director Ashley Kemp wrote in a comment posted on the commission’s website. “Although we may disagree as to the appropriate amount of funding for the agency, that amount is required to be funded through taxes paid into the general revenue fund, not through fees paid to the Ethics Commission’s revolving fund.”
The $7.6 billion budget is the largest amount appropriated by the Oklahoma Legislature, but Senate Appropriations and Budget Chair Kim David, who successfully guided the bill through the Senate this week, said that rank is misleading.
When compared with
the state population, this budget turns out to be less per capita than what Oklahoma spent a decade ago, she told reporters Friday.
“This is a definite first step in getting our agencies back to where they were, really from back in 2009,” said David, R-Porter.
Her House counterpart repeated a line frequently mentioned during budget talks, encouraging fellow House lawmakers to accept the negotiated deal instead of waiting for a better one that might never arrive.
“Definitely do not let ‘perfect’ be the enemy of ‘good,’” said Wellston Republican Kevin Wallace. “This is a good, sound, solid budget.”