Budget Agreement Has Some Highs and Lows

By Rep. Rick West

Well, the gang was all there last week to announce a budget agreement has been reached. The speaker of the House, the president pro tem of the Senate, the budget chairs and vice chairs from each chamber and as many representatives and senators as could crowd behind the governor. It made for a pretty picture.

There’s some good parts to this budget. They want to cut the state personal income tax by a quarter-percent for the top three brackets and eliminate it altogether for the bottom three brackets. This ought to hush those who claim tax cuts are only for the rich and famous. There’s also a plan to get the income tax to zero for everyone if certain revenue projections are met.

I’m for this deal. Arkansas charges only 3% income tax and Texas none. We’ve got to get in line, or we lose people and business. As long as we don’t try to come along later and try to tax something else, we should get rid of income tax and slash state spending to go with it.

One area we don’t need to slash, though, is transportation. This budget would get us up to $4,000 per mile for our county roads and provide about $25 million to address dilapidated county bridges. This ought to make every county commissioner in the state jump for joy. It also ought to make those who drive over these roads pretty happy.

Education is slated to get about 49%, or about $6 billion of this budget. This will add about $26 million to the school funding formula, and about $88.5 million to teachers’ flexible benefits allowance, plus $3 million to pay for maternity leave. Also this year, we voted to allow teachers to now use their sick leave as extra maternity leave.

Kids whose parents are teachers will now qualify for the Oklahoma’s Promise scholarship regardless of their parents’ income. That is unless the public school teacher’s children are homeschooled. Then the child must make at least a score of 22 on the ACT to qualify for the scholarship. This to me is blatant discrimination.

We’re also extending the teacher salary schedule to include another pay step for teachers with between 25 and 35 years in the classroom.

The budget also includes about $800 million for capital improvements. It designates $250 million for the new state-of-the-art veterinary hospital at Oklahoma State University, which is needed. There’s also $200 million planned for a pediatric heart hospital at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. In addition, we plan to pay $312 million to buy a private prison in Lawton.

It contains about $3 million for Rural Economic Action Plan Grants. These help rural communities complete sewer, water and other projects, which is huge for our rural areas.

We’re losing about $30 million to bail out the Department of Mental Health. Everyone and their dog is trying to figure out what happened there, and I’m hopeful we’ll get to the bottom of it and put in place better practices going forward.

The state budget was about $7 billion when I first got elected back in 2016, and we had no money in our state Rainy Day Fund. This budget is almost $12.6 billion, and after we’re done with appropriations, we’ll have about $3.5 to $4 billion in savings.

Negotiations are still ongoing on some items on the budget. My vote on the overall product will be determined on some issues still under consideration.

Remember to listen to my Capitol update on the radio at 7:35 a.m. every Thursday on KPRV 92.5 FM.

As always, if I can help you with anything, please call my Capitol office at (405) 557-7413 or email me at rick.west@okhouse.gov.

 

Rick West serves District 3 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. His district includes part of LeFlore County.