The Oklahoma Public Employees Association is calling on lawmakers to open up the appropriations process and to begin taking steps now to blunt the blow of budget cuts on the state’s most vulnerable. OPEA Executive Director Sterling Zearley believes the $1.3 billion budget gap will keep people from accessing services provided by state agencies.
“I’m a lifelong Oklahoman and have worked in, or with, state government for 32 years. I spent 23 years with the Department of Tourism and have been the Executive Director of OPEA for 9 years. I have never seen such a threat to core state services, ever. The recent program cuts, the ones that are planned plus a lack of state leadership in this crisis show that, we are on a runaway train with seemingly no one at the wheel,” said Zearley.
“We currently have a $1.3 billion shortfall and state agencies are making severe program cuts to balance their budgets. State agency staffs are desperately working to find ways to provide services despite the cuts. Lawmakers appear to be doing very little to help offset the budget hole and we don’t see legislators with the same sense of urgency as seen in state employees and consumers of services.”
OPEA suggests several specific measures to help bridge the funding gap.
Those measures include repeal the latest tax cut, eliminate the “double deduction” of state income tax, modernize the tax code, raise tobacco taxes, and eliminate unproductive tax credits.
The organization which represents state employees said it would like to also see corporate tax credits and incentives suspended in 2017, a gasoline tax tied to the per-barrel price of oil, tax internet purchases, use the Rainy Day Fund, and issue bond funding for road and bridge projects while diverting road funding to general revenue.
