Shortfall countdown

With the clock ticking, how might the state’s budget emergency be solved?

Last month, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down a cigarette fee that was expected to generate $215 million for the fiscal year 2018 state budget. Now without quick action, Oklahoma faces unimaginable cuts to health care and other protections for our state’s most vulnerable citizens. However, if they can overcome partisan differences, our leaders have an opportunity to not only resolve this crisis, but to come out of it with even stronger investments in Oklahoma families and communities.

Revenue from the cigarette fee had been dedicated to just three agencies. It accounted for 10 percent of the Department of Human Services total appropriation, 7 percent of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority’s total appropriation, and 23 percent of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services’ total appropriation.

Without quick legislative action to restore the lost funding, the consequences will be catastrophic. Even with the tobacco revenue, the initial state budget was “massively underfunded,” in the words of then-House Appropriations Chair Leslie Osborn. The Department of Human Services has already been forced to enact $30 million in cuts to senior nutrition services, in-home support for people with severe disabilities, payments to foster families, and child care subsidies for low-income working parents. The loss of another $200 million-plus in state dollars and even more federal matching funds would devastate our health care and human services providers and the people they serve.

David Blatt is Executive Director of Oklahoma Policy Institute. For the rest of this article and more, visit okpolicy.org.