Oklahoma Policy Institute Executive Director David Blatt released the following statement on the final results of Oklahoma’s 2017 regular legislative session:

If we look only at the bills that made it through the full legislative process to be signed by the governor, most Oklahomans would view this year’s legislative session as a disappointment. Lawmakers entered the session knowing they needed to confront big problems — like uncompetitive pay that is draining away our most skilled teachers and state workers; a failing, hugely expensive criminal justice system; long waiting lists for mental health treatment, at-home disability care, and other key health services; and a budget that every year falls further behind what’s needed to keep our state prosperous and safe. As the session limps to a close, lawmakers have failed to address any of these problems.

This failure is especially disappointing when we consider the promises made earlier in the year. Throughout legislative session, lawmakers repeated again and again that they would find funding to provide a teacher raise. Governor Fallin, legislative leaders, and experts in the community and law enforcement came together to develop a strong, well-thought-out agenda for criminal justice reform. Hundreds of advocates and lawmakers came to the table with practical revenue solutions to fund essential services and fix Oklahoma’s long-term budget outlook.

By these efforts, we came close to achieving big advances for Oklahoma families, only to crash against obstruction and gridlock in the final days of session. What emerged was a last-minute budget with more damaging cuts as well as legally questionable revenue measures. Most of the burden of this year’s budget shortfall was once again pushed onto low- and middle-income families while sparing the wealthiest households and corporate interests. The last chance for a teacher raise this year was derailed by the Senate’s refusal to cap itemized deductions for very wealthy households. This problematic budget was forced through with little time for Oklahomans to see what was in it or voice their concerns.

Amid these failures, we see an undercurrent of hope for Oklahoma’s future. This year, more than ever before, numerous informed, engaged Oklahomans regularly came to the Capitol or worked within their communities to advocate for better state policies. Popular outcry was key to stopping Oklahoma from moving backwards by allowing an expansion of predatory lending practices or rolling back the smart on crime reforms of State Question 780. Revenue ideas that had never been seriously considered before, despite years of failing budgets, were on the table in final negotiations. Legislative leadership ultimately failed to reach a bipartisan deal on the budget or prevent one member from derailing the work of the majority on criminal justice. But beneath that leadership failure is a rising group of lawmakers and regular Oklahomans who are eager to do better.

Better policies fell barely short of the finish line this year. We are excited to work with the lawmakers and other Oklahomans who are ready to carry that progress over the line, next year and beyond.

A liberal billionaire who funds a group pushing for increased taxes on new oil and gas wells in Oklahoma has a history of avoiding taxes himself.

George Kaiser, a Tulsa billionaire who was one of the biggest investors in failed Obama stimulus project Solyndra, is the top donor to a left-wing think tank that is leading the current effort to raise the oil and gas production tax in Oklahoma.

Democrats in Oklahoma are targeting energy companies as a means to cover the $878 million budget shortfall. House Democrats in the state have proposed legislation to increase the oil and gas production tax on new wells to seven percent, more than double the current rate of three percent.

Environmentalists, including the Oklahoma Sierra Club, have gotten behind the call for the increased taxes. If implemented, the tax increase could cost energy companies $500 million.

Read the complete story on freebeacon.com

By Steve Anderson, CPA and Jonathan Small, CPA

The Oklahoma Policy Institute (OPI) recently attacked Oklahoma-based Devon Energy, accusing the corporation of a windfall of profits and avoiding Oklahoma corporate income taxes. Here is the statement that OPI released:

“Number for the day 0.3%—Effective state corporate income tax paid by Devon Energy in (sic) from 2008 to 2015. Over that period, the company made $21.76 billion in profits but paid only $71 million in corporate income taxes, more than $1.2 billion less than if the company paid Oklahoma’s official corporate income tax rate of 6%.”

OPI cites the analysis of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a hard-left and George Soros-funded organization that has a long history of misrepresentation.

Apart from the issue of using phony data, OPI, who is actively engaged in trying to move Oklahoma’s tax code in a significantly more liberal direction and raise taxes by more than $1.4 billion annually, appears to be unaware of how companies are taxed. OPI appears to not realize that state income taxes are paid in the state where the income is earned.

It is well known that Devon has holdings in several states, as well as an extensive operation in Canada. In the United States, their largest area of oil and gas production was the Barnett Shale in Texas followed by the Eagle Ford in Texas. Only recently has Devon made a decision to expand operations in the Oklahoma Anadarko Basin, expanding their production beyond the 9% of total production prior to that in Oklahoma.

Commerce-aware Oklahomans know that Devon had significant operations outside the state. Even if the data for the study was correct, this fact alone renders OPI’s statement misleading. Oklahoma will never have a right to charge corporate income tax on corporate income that wasn’t earned in Oklahoma and is subject to another state’s taxing jurisdiction.

Read the complete story on ocpathink.org

A coalition of 20 organizations on Tuesday presented its Oklahoma budget wish list, which includes familiar ideas to raise revenue.

The Save Our State Coalition proposed raising the tax rate on oil and gas production to 7 percent, up from the current 2 percent rate that lasts for the first three years. The group’s “Blueprint for a Better Budget” also would create a new income tax rate of 6 percent for income above $200,000.

The group’s first news conference was Tuesday, where several high-profile state Capitol advocates and other groups presented the plan. Leaders of the Save Our State Coalition include policy groups, grassroots organizations and groups representing teachers and state employees.

The plan resembles House Democrats’ “Restoring Oklahoma” offering, but the two aren’t identical. The Democrats are asking for a gross production tax rate of 5 percent and would implement a steeper tax curve, raising the top income tax rate to 7 percent.

Read the complete story on newsok.com

via FrackFeed.com (A Project of Texans for Natural Gas)

Losing campaigns usually do one of two things: they recognize reality and call it quits, or they explore creative ways to attack their opponents. If they’re going down, then by golly, the other guy is too!

Meet the Oklahoma Policy Institute, a “think tank” in Tulsa, Okla., that has been trying for years to raise taxes on oil and natural gas production in the Sooner State. Their logic – if you can call it that – is that hiking taxes on oil and gas production by 250 percent (from 2 percent to 7 percent) won’t impact drilling at all, and thus it will raise a boatload of new revenue to fix Oklahoma’s budget deficit (which is actually a spending problem, but never mind that).

You’re probably asking a good question: If higher taxes won’t affect drilling activity, then why not raise taxes even more? Heck, why not raise taxes to 50 percent? Or even 100 percent? Imagine the revenue possibilities!

Of course, this is completely bonkers. It’s basic economics that if you want less of something, you tax it.

Needless to say, OPI’s campaign hasn’t been doing well. When Reuters parroted OPI’s claims last year, the state’s largest newspaper, The Oklahoman, called it “revisionist history.” The newspaper added that it was “based on flawed assumptions, faulty or even bogus data and magical thinking.” Ouch.

Facing these headwinds, OPI has chosen an interesting new approach: spread fake news about fracking.

OPI’s daily newsletter, ironically called “In The Know,” included a blurb this week claiming water contamination from fracking in Oklahoma. “Oklahoma Drinking Water Poisoned By Fracking, Claims New Report” reads the header from OPI (that’s also the headline used by the anti-fossil fuel website Clean Technica, to which OPI links).

Yes, yes… we know. How can anyone keep claiming such a thing? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asked and answered that whole fracking-has-not-led-to-widespread-water-contamination debate.

But this is actually kind of worse. The report OPI cites – authored by Clean Water Action, not “Clean Water Fund” as OPI claims – wasn’t even looking at fracking; it was looking at wastewater disposal, which is an entirely different process.

And here’s the real kicker: The Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC), which regulates oil and natural gas production in the state, met with the activists who wrote the silly report – before it was published – and told them they were wrong. The wells Clean Water Action had supposedly identified as injecting into drinking water sources were not doing so. “We told them their study was based on old data but they went head and released their study anyway apparently,” said a spokesman for OCC.

So OPI did not just share a dubious claim about fracking. It did so with a report that the authors knew was completely bogus. That’s probably why OPI had to link to a site like Clean Technica instead of a newspaper article (the Clean Technica article even cites its source as Think Progress, a left-wing blog in Washington, DC). Any credible journalist would take one look at the Clean Water Action report and laugh.

It’s hard to see how a credibility hit like this will improve OPI’s chances of raising taxes on the oil and natural gas industry, which already pays 22 percent of total state taxes and supports one out of every five Oklahoma jobs.

OPI clearly wants to revive its fledgling campaign, which is understandable. But disseminating fake news from fringe websites is hardly the path to a successful reboot.

Statement from Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs President Jonathan Small on the State of the State:

“Today’s executive budget pushes new tax increases on working families and entrepreneurs, which is the wrong path for our state. It’s a false choice to suggest the only way to balance the budget is to raise the cost of living and doing business in Oklahoma. There are still numerous spending reforms available to right-size government and fund core state services. The state could save hundreds of millions of dollars and prevent damaging tax increases on Oklahoma families if it was to end unnecessary wind subsidies, implement Medicaid reforms, cut administrative waste in higher education, and fully implement state and education employee health insurance reform. OCPA will work to pursue and accelerate those reforms and to stop attempts to raise taxes on Oklahomans.”

Oklahoma Policy Institute Executive Director David Blatt released the following comment in response to Governor Fallin’s State of the State address:

I applaud Governor Fallin’s call to fix Oklahoma’s structural budget deficits and reverse years of funding cuts that are damaging the health and prosperity of our entire state. The Legislature must heed the governor’s calls to reduce incarceration, fund a teacher pay raise, and restore the 5-day school week. Oklahoma knows how to address these problems, and we have no excuse not to do something this year.

Governor Fallin’s tax reform proposals, which include ending the corporate income tax and the sales tax on groceries while expanding the sales tax base in other ways, has potential to reduce revenue volatility and end one of the most regressive aspects of our tax system. However, these reforms must be carefully assessed for how they would affect families, the economy, and state revenues. Oklahoma’s budget hole grew from years of tax cuts and tax breaks passed without consideration for what they would cost. Going forward, tax reforms need to stick to a more realistic assessment of what our state needs to do its job.

A grand bargain on tax reform should also include other policies to end loopholes, improve funding for the services Oklahomans need most, and make our tax system work for regular families – policies like rolling back cuts to Oklahoma’s Earned Income Tax Credit, restoring a higher income tax rate for very high incomes, and ending the capital gains tax break. Together these reforms would stabilize revenues and provide a strong foundation for all Oklahoma families to build a prosperous future.

Three veteran state lawmakers whose government service careers are about to end are launching a new think tank that promotes conservative fiscal policies.

The Oklahoma Opportunity Project, a Tulsa-based nonprofit, is headed by state Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Mazzei, R-Tulsa, who is leaving the Legislature in January because he has reached the statutory limit of 12 years of legislative service.

At least two other departing legislators will serve on the board: Sen. Jim Halligan, a former Oklahoma State University president who currently chairs the Senate Appropriations education subcommittee, and Sen. John Ford, a retired ConocoPhillips executive who chairs the Senate Education Committee.

Halligan decided to retire from the Legislature instead of running for a third term this year. Ford, like Mazzei, is leaving because he has reached the end of his term limit.

Several other retiring lawmakers, including some House members, have been invited to participate but have not yet confirmed, Mazzei said.

Mazzei, a certified financial planner, told Oklahoma Watch that the Opportunity Project will reflect the views of fiscal conservatives like himself on issues of state finance, education and health policy.

“Our goal, in the era of term limits, is to offer policy ideas and institutional knowledge to members of the Legislature who would like to have some expertise that doesn’t come from lobbyists and agency employees,” Mazzei said.

The Opportunity Project will enter a policy-advising field that includes a number of single-focus organizations as well as at least two prominent multi-issue research and advocacy groups: the center-left Oklahoma Policy Institute in Tulsa and the conservative Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in Oklahoma City.

Mazzei said organizations such as OK Policy and OCPA play an important role in the legislative process, but generally lack the insider perspective gained from years of service in the House or Senate.

“Our ideological friends out there sometimes make proposals that sound good on paper, but they don’t work in the real world,” Mazzei said. “And neither do they understand the political realities of how to get stuff done at the Capitol.

“That level of detail and expertise frankly just doesn’t exist at the think tanks,“ he said.

Although Mazzei, Halligan and Ford were part of the GOP legislative leadership team this year, Mazzei cited two examples of significant policy mistakes he thinks were made during a session dominated by a $1.3 billion budget hole:

• The Legislature should have done more to reduce the state’s structural revenue shortfall heading into 2017, including delaying an already approved income tax cut and changing the “trigger” formula for yet another reduction, he said.
• Lawmakers should have approved their own teacher pay raise plan, he said, one that required teachers to work a few more days each year and participate in more career enhancement programs.

The think tank board also will include three non-legislative directors: Mazzei’s father James Mazzei, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel in Tulsa; Joel Sander, an Edmond accountant, and Jamie Ledbetter, a Tulsa community volunteer.

Mazzei said his goal was to have a board with eight to 10 members. He said the group would have no paid staffers during its first year of operation and was in the process of creating an initial operating budget.

Oklahoma Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that produces in-depth and investigative content on a range of public-policy issues facing the state. For more Oklahoma Watch content, go to oklahomawatch.org.

The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures, while the Fifth Amendment requires due process and just compensation for property taken by the government for public use. So, how did we get to a point in history where government is seizing personal property with no compensation and little to no evidence of a crime?

This upside-down process is called “civil asset forfeiture” and it certainly does not line up with our nation’s constitutional ideals. Property is seized by government officials supposedly because it’s connected to criminal activity. Yet many seizures are not accompanied by a conviction, or even the filing of charges.

Law enforcement agencies at all levels of government have used civil asset forfeiture for years, but the recent economic downturn seems to have caused many agencies to turn to forfeiture funds to balance their budgets. This profit motive distorts law enforcement decision-making, leading to the victimization of innocent Oklahomans.

To be deprived of your life or liberty, you must be found guilty of a crime “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But to be deprived of your property under civil asset forfeiture, the government only needs to establish that a “preponderance of the evidence” points to your property’s guilt. This lower threshold places the burden on the property owner to prove the property isn’t connected to criminal activity. We find this unacceptable.

Read the complete story on NewsOK.com

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.

Read the complete story on NewsOK.com

Nationally Known Leader Joins OCPA
Constitutional scholar Trent England is devoted to America’s founding principles

(OKLAHOMA CITY, June 23) — Trent England, former executive vice president of the Seattle-based Freedom Foundation, has joined the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs as vice president for strategic initiatives and as holder of a prestigious chair, OCPA President Michael Carnuccio said today.

“This is a real coup for OCPA and for Oklahoma,” Carnuccio said. “Trent England is one of the rising national stars in the free-market think tank movement. He will bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to OCPA and to our ongoing efforts to carry the message of liberty throughout Oklahoma and the nation.”

England earned a degree in government from Claremont McKenna College and a law degree from George Mason University. Prior to his service with the Freedom Foundation in Seattle, he worked as a legal policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation.

In Seattle, England directed key advocacy efforts by the Freedom Foundation and was an advisor and contributor to the State Policy Network’s “We the People” curriculum. England also directs the “Save Our States” project, which is dedicated to preserving the Electoral College and warning of the dangers of the National Popular Vote initiative.

England has contributed to two books, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution and One Nation under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and numerous other publications.

At OCPA, England will direct the organization’s Center for the Constitution and Freedom and will hold the chair as the David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow for the Advancement of Liberty, a fellowship previously held by the legendary J. Rufus Fears. England will also serve as national coordinator for the Liberty Foundation of America, OCPA’s national affiliate organization dedicated to federalism.

“I am profoundly excited to join the OCPA team that has so successfully advanced policies based on our nation’s founding principles,” England said. “It is a measure of OCPA’s effectiveness that it has a national reputation and now a national affiliate in the Liberty Foundation.

“Abraham Lincoln predicted, in his first recorded speech, that the natural strength of the United States means the nation will stand so long as the people remain united and dedicated to our founding principles. Today we are divided over those very ideas,” England said. “OCPA is dedicated to reviving our nation by reuniting the people and our public officials around those ideas, those principles.

“My own personal mission is to return our nation to constitutional fidelity based on the principles that are the bedrock beneath our Constitution and the American Founding.”

OCPA is Oklahoma’s premier think tank focused on economic and educational freedom. Its scholars and publications often prompt discussions and debates at the state and national level that lead to reform legislation.

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