Budget deal sails through Senate

By John Greiner

Published: March 21, 2007

State senators voted 48-0 Tuesday for a multi-billion-dollar budget package to avert financial problems for schools and other agencies this year and operate state government in the coming fiscal year.

The package includes $92.5 million in emergency funding for schools, prisons and other agencies to get through the fiscal year than ends June 30 and $6.87 billion to run government in the next fiscal year.

House Bill 1234 goes to the House of Representatives, which is scheduled to vote on it today.

Leaders of both houses developed this plan and announced it Monday — without input from Gov. Brad Henry.

Democratic Senate President Pro Tempore Mike Morgan said the package focuses on education, health care and public safety, even though revised state revenue projections were $250 million less than originally estimated.

"This measure represents the earliest budget agreement in more than three decades. For the first time, it will allow us to meet the ‘fund education first' deadline we established in 2003,” Morgan said. "Most importantly, the budget agreement will allow state agencies to continue to provide the services Oklahomans count on every day. It also makes good on all the Legislature's existing obligations.”

"The Legislature has a constitutional duty to appropriate money, and we have worked very hard to develop this carefully balanced, bipartisan budget agreement,” said the Senate's co-president pro tempore, Glenn Coffee, R-Oklahoma City.

Henry said Monday he was encouraged by progress on supplemental funding but disappointed that legislative leaders rolled emergency and regular spending items into what amounts to the largest spending bill in state history.

This has stifled debate about individual budget items and forced legislators to make an "all-or-nothing decision” without any real input, Henry said.

The supplemental appropriations that will carry state agencies through the remaining months of this current fiscal year include $60 million for public schools and $5.5 million for the Oklahoma Higher Learning Access Program, which offers college scholarships to Oklahoma teens who meet certain income limitations, make good high school grades and stay out of trouble.

One of the few questions raised Tuesday in the Senate came from Sen. Richard Lerblance, who asked how the Legislature was going to fully fund the supplemental budget request from the Corrections Department.

The Corrections Department asked for $47 million to get through this fiscal year and received less than $10 million, said Lerblance, D-Hartshorne.

Sen. Mike Johnson, R-Kingfisher, the co-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he's not sure the Legislature will fully fund corrections. But it remains a top priority, he said.

The budget deal set aside $66 million for lawmakers to appropriate later in the legislative session, Johnson said.

The other part of the budget plan — tax cuts — will be handled separately.

The tax cut plan includes accelerating the state income tax cuts adopted in 2006, giving a back-to-school sales tax holiday in August, a tax credit for stay-at-home parents and a franchise tax exemption for businesses owing $250 or less a year.

"The budget agreement will allow state agencies to continue to provide the services Oklahomans count on.”

Senate Co-President Pro Tempore Mike Morgan