AP: Oklahoma Faces Budget Crisis Despite Economic Boom
Oklahoma faces budget crisis despite economic boom
Sean Murphy, Associated Press
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma’s oil patch is booming, its capital city is thriving and the unemployment rate is falling through the floor, testifying to the state’s roaring recovery from the recession.
But even though revenue is pouring into the state treasury, the legislature is wrestling with a self-inflicted budget crisis that could prompt cuts to education, public safety and health care.
The problem is that lawmakers over the last decade have created and expanded so many tax breaks and earmarked so much money for special projects that there’s no longer enough for basic services.
Thus, in a bizarre scene of crisis in the midst of plenty, 25,000 angry teachers and parents thronged the statehouse recently to protest the prospect of more cost-cutting in classrooms as lawmakers were preparing to consider a new income tax give-back responding to the boom conditions.
“The left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing in Oklahoma. It’s absolutely ludicrous,” said Republican state Rep. David Dank, a critic of the legislature’s pattern of approving new tax breaks without calculating the budget impact first.