Steve Fair
Republican National Committeeman
From The Tulsa World
The 2015 Oklahoma Legislature adjourned on Friday. This was a down budget year. The Legislature appropriated just -1.03 percent less in 2016 than they did in 2015 — $7.14 billion vs. 7.2 billion in FY 2016, even though the State Board of Equalization certified lawmakers had $611 million less to spend than last year. By taking $150 million from the Rainy Day Fund and $125 million from revolving funds from state agencies, they avoided deeper cuts.
Education funding was kept at the same level as last year. Education gets the bulk of tax dollars — over 50 percent — each year. Corrections, Public Safety, Health Care, Mental Health and some other agencies also avoided cuts this year. According to a press release by the state House of Representatives, this year’s budget will display all agency funding to present a more full funding picture of state government. That will allow taxpayers to have a better overall idea of how state government is funded, increasing transparency. Four observations about this year’s budget:
First, tapping agency revolving funds is a good thing. Several state government agencies had millions of taxpayer dollars sitting in the bank. Agency heads mistakenly thought those monies belonged to them. Tapping agency reserves took political will. That should be applauded. Legislators announced they were going to take some of that money early in the legislative session. That should have been done years ago. If a government agency is building up reserves, that simply means they are getting too much of our tax money. The millions in reserve funds make a great case for needs- based budgeting in Oklahoma.
Second, where’s the streamlining and rightsizing Oklahoma government that Republicans have been campaigning on for the past decade? Under Republican control, the state budget continues to grow. The 2015 session was a perfect opportunity for Republicans to identify waste in government and act accordingly. Instead they simply did the same thing the Democrats did when they were in the majority: dipped into the Rainy Day and reserves to maintain the status quo. In 2006, when Republicans took control of the state Legislature, the overall state budget was $5.95 billion. This year’s budget is +17 percent at $7.14 billion. Talking about smaller and more efficient government and doing are two different things.
Third, the one state agency — State Auditor & Inspector — charged with finding government waste was cut more disproportionally than others . The auditor’s office took a 7.25 percent hit in their appropriated monies and $500,000 was taken out of their revolving funds. Gary Jones, the current auditor, has been vocally critical of the budget process as being overly political because it gives a small group of legislators a greater amount of influence in the process. Jones has advocated zero-based or needs-based budgeting, which is a process where state agencies would have to justify every penny they receive in tax dollars. Did the Legislature cut Jones’ budget more because of that criticism? That will likely never be known, but what is known is the Legislature is not really serious about finding waste in government because if they were, the office of auditor and inspector would be given the funding to do their job- especially in down budget years.
Fourth, Republicans should simply stop campaigning on streamlining government until they have the political will to actually do it. Cutting the size of government requires a very tedious process of identifying wasteful government spending and then having the political will to eliminate it. You can’t locate waste without an audit and you can’t audit without funding the auditor. Simply making across the board cuts or slashing an elected official’s budget because they criticize the budget process is petty and shouldn’t be done by those really serious about ‘rightsizing’ Oklahoma state government.
Oh, by the way, the Legislature didn’t cut their own budget a penny.
Steve Fair is National Committeeman for the Oklahoma Republican Party.
Spot on. Republican politicians promise lean government, but do little to achieve it. Sharpen the knives, guys. The current structure of Oklahoma’s government was not carved on a stone tablet and brought down from a mountain. Look at Indiana, Kansas and other states where we might be able to learn something. And turn that auditor loose.
The legislature INCREASED their budgets and continue to fund ONE BIG MES—Management Enterprise System, which is what the SA&I is supposed to do. Creating a department of redundancy department—DUMB! Let’s get Gary to do it!