Billion-dollar budget hole causes confusion over multitudes of tax breaks

Wednesday, February 17, 2010
By Scott Cooper

Contact: David Blatt, Director

(918) 794-3944; (918) 859-8747 - cell

Oklahoma Policy Institute Report Shines Light on Need for Greater Scrutiny of State Tax Breaks

(Tulsa, February 17, 2010):  Oklahoma's budget crisis creates new needs and new opportunities to review the state's extensive system of tax breaks, according to a research brief released today by Oklahoma Policy Institute, a state policy organization.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- The rhetoric doesn't match the math when Gov. Brad Henry talks about plugging a billion-dollar shortfall in Oklahoma's current budget.

While the deficit is huge -- $729 million -- it is well short of the "more than $1 billion" Henry has cited since his State of the State address Feb. 1.

"It just doesn't reflect the actual shortfall this year," said David Blatt, director of policy for the Oklahoma Policy Institute think tank and a former budget analyst for the Oklahoma Senate.

On January 13, David was the guest of Rich Fisher on Studio Tulsa discussing the state's worsening fiscal outlook. From the Studio Tulsa website, you can listen to the full 25-minute interview.

OUR VIEWS: Long-range ideas would be welcome

The Oklahoman Editorial Published: January 18, 2010

It would really be refreshing, as the legislative session approaches, to have someone - anyone - say they intend to spend time during the next several months trying to come up with ways to help Oklahoma thrive for the next many years.

In mid-January, David Blatt gave a presentation to a legislative advocacy meeting of the Oklahoma Library Association. KGOU taped the presentation and ran it as part of their Oklahoma Voices series on January 18, 2010. Click here to hear the audio presentation (MP3). The slides that formed the basis of the presentation can be viewed and downloaded here.

by David Blatt; published January 13, 2009

Oklahoma is in the midst of its worst fiscal crisis since the oil bust of the 1980s. Revenue collections are coming in 28 percent below a year ago and the state is projecting budget shortfalls of at least a billion dollars this year and next. Even with federal stimulus dollars and the eventual use of the state's reserve funds, budget shortfalls are already resulting in deep and painful cuts to core programs serving senior citizens, people with mental health disorders, victims of domestic violence, troubled teens and others that are likely to lead to greater costs over time.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Is Oklahoma's deepening budget shortfall forcing Republican state lawmakers to abandon their core goal of tax relief?

That's what one Republican member of the Oklahoma House suggests in a confidential memorandum to GOP House members that seeks support for a plan to freeze property taxes for seniors and reduce annual property tax increases for other homeowners.

According to the memo, Rep. Dave Dank, R-Oklahoma City, takes issue with Republican colleagues who opposed the plan at a GOP caucus retreat in Claremore last month.

THE word "assets" and the term "lower-income citizens" rarely appear in the same sentence. The working poor often have no assets, so the lack of a linkage is axiomatic.

Yet linking "assets" to "lower-income citizens" is not only possible but desirable for all of us, according to a thoughtful analysis prepared by The Oklahoma Policy Institute's David Blatt.

No further tax cuts are in the offing for the foreseeable future, so Oklahoma’s tendency to tax lower-income citizens disproportionately is also unlikely to change any time soon. 

The state is rated as having an exceptionally regressive tax system by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which says low- and moderate-income Oklahomans surrender a greater portion of their incomes to taxes than those with higher incomes.