The Oklahoma House worked on a Friday to pass Senate Bill 1600, the next state budget. It totals $7.6 billion dollars in appropriated funds.
According to House leadership, the budget is a $745 million increase over the previous budget, including a 19.8 percent increase for common education. It is the largest appropriation to K-12 education in state history.
The Legislature also appropriated $2 million to fund agency audits by the Agency Performance and Accountability Commission (APAC), which the Legislature created last session, and more than $11 million to help fund numerous criminal justice reforms that Governor Fallin signed into law Thursday.
“I’m proud the Legislature has finally funded a long-overdue pay increase for our dedicated teachers throughout Oklahoma,” said House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka. “This budget proves our commitment to education by setting a new funding baseline for public schools for future years, and we intend to continue investing in students, teachers and schools. This increased budget will provide certainty to our citizens and the agencies that provide them services.
“We are in an extraordinarily better position than we were just one year ago because we have made the hard votes, and we have also benefitted from an improved economy. In fact, we are projected to deposit more than $300 million into the Rainy Day Fund at the end of this fiscal year, which the Constitution requires when revenues exceed the official estimate. The budget also provides resources to fully implement the agency performance audits we put in place last session.”
While the House Republicans are running a victory lap, House Democrats are throwing cold water on celebration. They issued a statement saying the budget was an improvement from previous budgets, but they insist more work can be done.
“Although this budget is an improvement over past Republican budgets, it falls far short of meeting the needs of Oklahomans. When mandated pay raises are excluded from the budget, two-thirds of state agencies will not see increases in their appropriations.
Both Democrats and Republicans agreed today that this budget, built primarily by increasing the tax burden on working-class Oklahomans, isn’t enough. Yet, we are ending session nearly a month early while wasteful corporate tax exemptions like the capital gains exemption are still in place, and irresponsible income tax cuts still haven’t been addressed,” House Democrats said in a statement after the budget was passed by a 63 to 31 vote.
It now awaits the governor’s signature.
