OPI’s Blatt: Fallin Wins Four More Years. Now What?
David Blatt: Fallin given four more years as Oklahoma governor. Now what?
BY DAVID BLATT
As expected, Oklahoma voters have re-elected Gov. Mary Fallin to a second term. Backed by a strong Republican majority in the Legislature, the governor will have another four years to put her policies in place.
Yet even those voters who were paying attention during the campaign can be forgiven for lacking a clear sense of the governor’s second-term agenda. Throughout the recent campaign, Fallin trumpeted her first-term record. But other than acknowledging the need for additional funding for education, she was largely silent on what policies or ideas she might pursue next.
Oklahoma faces no shortage of opportunities for strong leadership to tackle urgent and longstanding problems. Here are a few areas calling out for action:
The state faces a widening gap, or structural deficit, between the cost of providing basic public services such as education, corrections and health care, and the tax revenues we collect to fund them. The state budget never fully recovered from the last downturn of 2008-10. Even with a strong state economy, we’re confronting budget shortfalls that have forced deeper cuts across broad swaths of state government. The governor should lead a serious review of what we realistically expect state government to do, how much it will cost, and how we’re going to pay for it.