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Budget features tax cuts, more for education and savings By: Trevor Brown Oklahoma Watch May 14, 2021
A new budget unveiled for the state reduces corporate income tax from 6% to 4% and was crafted to make Oklahoma more attractive for investment by business and industry, Gov. Kevin Stitt and Republican leaders say. (Photo by Science in HD on Unsplash)
You almost wouldn’t know Oklahoma was coming out of a pandemic and financial downturn based on a state budget agreement Gov. Kevin Stitt and GOP lawmakers unveiled Thursday.
The $8.3 billion spending plan avoids any cuts to the state budget, slashes taxes for low and high earners and puts hundreds of millions back into the state’s rainy day account.
Hamilton: Sine Die looms as lawmakers map plans for future By: Arnold Hamilton Guest Columnist May 13, 2021
Arnold Hamilton
Even before the pandemic short-circuited last year’s session, Republican statehouse leaders made it an annual point of pride to wrap up their work before the constitutionally mandated last-Friday-in-May deadline.
It didn’t really matter whether they’d accomplished much beyond the bare essentials of budgeting. The point was to draw a contrast from a century of Democratic management that routinely used every last second.
Will sine die come early this year?
Well, legislative leaders appear to have cleared one significant hurdle, broadly agreeing on the FY ’22 state budget. But it’s never wise to assume everything’s a done deal until it’s a done deal.
JoeAnn Vermillion
Guest columnist
As encouraging trends of statewide COVID-19 data emerge, Oklahomans are beginning to sigh breaths of relief. We have all observed the data over the last 13 months in horror: nationally, the virus killed more than 182,000 nursing home residents and staff of other long-term care facilities. To date, 1,600 Oklahoma nursing home residents and staff have died from COVID-19. Many of these deaths were exacerbated by ongoing issues in long-term care facilities such as poor infection control and staffing shortages.
Though quality issues existed in nursing homes well before the COVID-19 pandemic, it highlights the need to reimagine and reform how older Oklahomans receive care. Oklahoma ranked among the lowest in the nation for nursing home quality of care as recently as 2018. Our state currently ranks second nationally for low-care need nursing home residents who could be better served in home-based settings.