{"id":3867,"date":"2012-01-24T13:10:28","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T19:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=3867"},"modified":"2012-01-30T13:52:10","modified_gmt":"2012-01-30T19:52:10","slug":"roadshow-comments-it-feels-like-a-broken-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/01\/24\/roadshow-comments-it-feels-like-a-broken-promise\/","title":{"rendered":"Roadshow Comments: ‘It Feels Like a Broken Promise’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ NPR StateImpact<\/p>\n

State Sen. Tom Adelson, D-Tulsa, speaks with an audience member after paneling a state budget town-hall forum in Tulsa.<\/p>\n<\/div>

We kicked off our three-city roadshow<\/a> on the state budget last night, and the Tulsa event couldn’t have gone better.<\/p>

The two lawmakers on our panel \u2014 state Sen. Tom Adelson, D-Tulsa, and Rep. Earl Sears<\/a>, R-Bartlesville \u2014 talked about their priorities for the upcoming legislative session and highlighted the budget-related topics most likely to dominate the political conversation.<\/p>

Not surprisingly, the income tax<\/a> dominated a lot of the conversation \u2014 both from the panelists and the forum audience.<\/p>

<\/p>

Our third panelist, David Blatt<\/a>, director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute, defended Oklahoma’s personal income tax and reiterated research<\/a> by his organization that proposals to reduce or eliminate the income tax would effectively raise taxes for most Oklahomans.<\/p>

[module align=”left” width=”half” type=”pull-quote”]<\/p>

“I’m kind of a tax cut casualty myself.”<\/p>\n

-Social Studies Teacher, Booker T. Washington High School<\/h6>

[\/module]<\/p>

Public Radio Tulsa, a StateImpact Oklahoma collaborative partner, hosted the town hall-style forum <\/a>on the University of Tulsa campus.<\/p>

Brian Marcum, who represented the Tulsa chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, asked about state funding for jail-diversion programs<\/p>

“I’m concerned about the people we lock up in prisons who have mental illness,” he said.<\/p>

Several teachers attended the event. One woman felt strongly that even talking about cutting taxes with the current state of education in Oklahoma was “unconscionable.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ NPR StateImpact<\/p>\n

Students, teachers and activists questioned and commented on the Oklahoma's budget at Monday's forum in Tulsa.<\/p>\n<\/div>

One man, a social studies teacher at Tulsa’s Booker T. Washington High School who described himself as a “tax cut casualty,” asked whether funding would be restored to a state program that gives National Board Certified teachers a $5,000 annual stipend for 10 years.<\/p>

“I’m kind of a tax cut casualty myself,” he said.<\/p>

The stipend program wasn’t included in the Department of Education’s 2012 budget. Losing the stipend was the equivalent to a 12 percent pay cut, the teacher said:<\/p>

“It feels like a broken promise.”<\/p>

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Barresi chose not to seek funding for the stipend program, not legislators, Rep. Sears said, pointing out that lawmakers didn’t have “line-item” authority in that instance.<\/p>

Still, lawmakers could fund the stipend program with a special supplement, Sears said.<\/p>

“It is a deal we made. It is a pact that we made. We need to live up to that,” he said. “If the money was there, that will be our intent to do that.”<\/p>

StateImpact Oklahoma’s roadshow continues Wednesday in Oklahoma City and Tuesday, Jan. 31 in Stillwater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We kicked off our three-city roadshow on the state budget last night, and the Tulsa event couldn’t have gone better.The two lawmakers on our panel \u2014 state Sen. Tom Adelson, D-Tulsa, and Rep. Earl Sears, R-Bartlesville \u2014 talked about their priorities for the upcoming legislative session and highlighted the budget-related topics most likely to dominate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":3869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[274,166,57,855,118,147],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3867"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4124,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867\/revisions\/4124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}