The Marlatt Memo 04/29/14 By State Senator Bryce Marlatt Senate District 27 -- Beaver, Cimarron, Dewey, Ellis, Harper, Major, Texas, Woods, Woodward counties Back in the mid-2000’s, Oklahoma launched a bold effort to address the many dangerous bridges and roads that for decades had been placed on the back-burner. It was so bad, Oklahoma was ranked among the worst in the nation for the number of dangerous bridges we had in our state. In 2012, I authored legislation to increase the funding to address those bridges as well as increasing the funding needed to repair county roads and bridges. I still believe these infrastructure investments are among the most important our state has ever undertaken. But we also know there are other important needs in Oklahoma, including our schools. Throughout this session, work has been underway to identify additional resources for the classroom. This past week, the full Senate approved legislation that will ultimately provide an additional $600 million annually for common education. One big change in the version that was approved in the full Senate and legislation that was passed out of committee earlier this month is that it does not call for using a portion of the funds that are currently designated for transportation infrastructure needs in our state. The language approved by the full Senate calls for a dedicated appropriation of $30 million in fiscal year 2015, which begins on July 1st of this year. That amount would then increase by $30 million each year through FY ’18. The next year, FY ’19, is when the transportation infrastructure fund will reach its target of $575 million—when that happens, it will free up an additional $60 million which can then be dedicated to education. In addition to making sure the bridge repairs would stay on track, we also needed to craft the bill to take into account unforeseen economic changes in the coming years. After the first year, the bill has specific economic levels that must be met in order for additional funds to be added to the Securing Educational Excellence Fund. I think many people in Oklahoma have been disappointed that the lottery didn’t seem to make as big of a difference in education funding as people thought it would. There are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, the lottery simply hasn’t produced the kind of revenues that supporters claimed it would. There’s also been the complaint that lottery funds simply took the place of other resources for public schools. The education funding bill we approved this past week includes safeguards to ensure that these new, dedicated funds are actually additional dollars going to our schools—they can’t be used to replace existing appropriations. We know as Oklahoma works to improve student achievement, increase high school graduation rates, and reduce the need for college remediation, this will require additional resources—but it also will require additional instruction time to meet those goals. It will cost about $22 million for each additional day of instruction, so under this bill, for every $60 million, one day of instruction will be added. I also want to point out that we are still facing increasing costs for health insurance benefits for our teachers. Those will continue to be addressed through the regular appropriations process. The Securing Educational Excellence Fund will be targeted for the classroom, directly benefiting Oklahoma students and educators. Our public schools are an important core service, just as transportation is in Oklahoma. I don’t believe we should put them in competition with one another. Thanks to the hard work of many individuals in the legislature, we now have a plan that will enable us to stay on schedule to address our transportation infrastructure and make much-needed investments in education. Again, if you have a question or concern about legislative issues, please feel free to contact my Capitol office at 405.521.5626 or at [email protected].
Posted on: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 14:49:33 +0000
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