Step On Oklahoma,
the Largest Tax Increase in State History Goes Down in Flames
On Monday we witnessed a day of sanity in Oklahoma as the State Chamber of Commerce tax increase plan, named "Step Up Oklahoma" went down in flames. The plan was widely labeled "Step On Oklahoma" for the massive .8 billion dollar tax increases contained in the bill. Without a doubt the donor class pulled every trick in the book and pulled in media favors in order to push their agenda but to no avail as the bill failed by 13 votes needed to pass a tax increase. SQ 640 worked as it was intended to work, defeating a 51% majority from raising taxes.
Part of the defeat came down to the Trump effect. Who in their right mind would raise taxes while Trump is pushing tax reform and lower taxes. Part of it was targeting four of the worst freshmen legislators via Facebook advertising to the zip codes in their districts. All four still voted for the massive tax hike but seeing the RINOs taking heat and getting phone calls helped the Democrats and conservative Republicans stand firm. Several thousand voters per district got a chance to see how their legislator voted last year and that alone will kick start opposition against the tax and spend liberal Republicans and perhaps bring forth a challenger in the June primary.
The enormous defeat left House leadership badly damaged. Four to five legislators have announced their plans to run against Speaker McCall in the March election for Speaker of the House. The GOP caucus is badly fractured and House leadership understands that they HAVE to come to the center and vote conservatively for the rest of the legislative session or risk losing all those legislators that were bought and paid for with campaign donations to secure their vote for speaker in 2016.
And on that front there is progress. Conservative Republicans reached out to leadership with the Gann Plan, a plan on funding a teacher pay raise using under used state trust funds that are earmarked for secondary education but prohibited to be spent by Mary Fallin who wanted to grow the trust fund up from the current 2.4 billion dollars to 3 billion dollars. Now a lot of explaining needs done by Fallin as we find out that most of the money for a teacher pay raise has been sitting in state coffers for many years. Along with the pay raise it is expected that some reform of administrative costs will be put in place, dropping Oklahoma secondary education and higher education admin costs down to the national level would save nearly a half billion dollars per year. The school land trust fund isn't generating enough excess cash from its rents and investments but it can cover half of the raises if the admin costs are brought into line.
House leadership has seen the potential for saving both face and their power by partnering with conservative Republicans. There have been a series of meetings this last week and the bill is expected to come up for consideration soon or House leadership will have some explaining to do to the teachers.
