Dutcher Asks, 'LWV To Support Voter ID?'

Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs executive and blogger Brandon Dutcher asks today if the League of Women Voters now will support voter ID legislation in light of the Tulsa World's discovery of the dead casting ballots last year.

"One has to assume the answer is yes," Dutcher blogs. "After all, League spokesman Gloria Caldwell said last month that 'if there were any evidence of voter impersonation in Oklahoma elections, the League of Women Voters would be first in line supporting this kind of [voter ID] legislation, but proponents cannot identify one single case.'

"Now that the Tulsa World has found that as many as 429 dead Oklahomans are still registered to vote, and that as many as 10 have voted postmortem since 2004, surely a League press release is imminent."

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An Open Letter To Mary Easley

http://okschoolchoice.blogspot.com/2009/01/im-from-government-and-im-here-to-help.html

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Column: Oklahoma Beckons Californians

By Brandon Dutcher and J. Scott Moody In The San Francisco Examiner ~ In the 1930s hardship and adversity forced many Okies to leave their homes and start a new life in California. Perhaps now is a good time for some Californians to leave their home-schools and start a new life in Oklahoma.

Home-schoolers Welcome Here

"California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home," said Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), after a recent state appellate court ruling declared that parents don't have a constitutional right to home school their children.

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, added, "There are going to be a lot of parents forced to make some very difficult decisions if an appeal is not successful."

Parents weighing their options might want to consider the most homeschool-friendly state in the country. For when it comes to educational freedom for homeschoolers, "You're doin' fine, Oklahoma" is a massive understatement.

"Oklahoma law does not require parents to use certified teachers or state-approved curricula, initiate contact with, register with or seek approval from state or local officials, test their students or permit public school officials to visit or inspect homes," HSLDA points out. "If a parent is teaching his children the basic subjects for at least 180 days, the law requires nothing more."

Indeed, HSLDA notes, "Oklahoma is the only state with a constitutional provision guaranteeing the right to home school." The state constitution directs the legislature to provide for attendance at some public or other school—"unless other means of education are provided."

As one delegate to the Oklahoma constitutional convention argued in 1907, "People ought to be allowed to use their own discretion as to how to educate their children."

Not only will ex-Californians be pleased with the freedom to teach their own children at home, they'll be pleasantly surprised at how many square feet they can afford in which to do it.

According to ACCRA, the nation's most respected cost-of-living index, of the 329 U.S. metropolitan areas surveyed in 2007, all the California cities represented are huddled together in the top (most expensive) 20 percent. San Francisco leads the way with a cost of living that exceeds the national average by a whopping 70.9 percent. The most "reasonable" cost-of-living city in California is Bakersfield, at 8.2 percent above the national average.

Oklahoma, on the other hand, is at the other end of the cost-of-living spectrum, with its represented cities falling in the bottom one-third of all cities surveyed.

This cost-of-living difference not only means that your dollar will buy more goods and services in Oklahoma than in California, it also means lower federal income taxes. How so? Because the federal income tax code does not adjust items like the standard deduction, exemptions, or tax brackets for cost of living. As a result, folks in high cost-of-living areas, such as California, suffer a cost-of-living tax penalty.

For example, take a married couple with one child earning $100,000 who purchase a fixed bundle of goods. If they lived in San Francisco, they would need to earn $170,852 to buy that fixed bundle of goods, whereas in Oklahoma City they would need only $92,202. However, the couple in San Francisco would pay 19.8 percent of their income to Uncle Sam, but the Oklahoma City couple would pay only 13.3 percent.

In addition to federal taxes, there is also a disparity between the state and local tax burdens in the two states. On average, California residents pay 11.2 percent of their income in state and local taxes whereas Oklahoma residents pay 9.75 percent—or 13 percent less. Another way to look at the tax disparity: in 2007, California's top marginal income tax rate was 9.3 percent while Oklahoma's was 5.65 percent.

So if you're tired of traffic and high prices, maybe it's time to pack up those moving trucks and get your kicks on Route 66. When your friends and neighbors ask why you're leaving, just tell them, "We'd sooner homeschool."

Brandon Dutcher is vice president for policy at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, an independent think tank. J. Scott Moody is an OCPA research fellow.

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Hearings Focus On Government Modernization

House Speaker Lance Cargill and House leaders today kicked off a series of hearings focused on modernizing Oklahoma’s state government with testimony from the director of Iowa’s “charter agency” reform effort and others.

“Charter agencies are a simple concept: if they agree to be more accountable and measurable for results, then we give agency heads more authority and autonomy,” said Teresa Hay McMahon (pictured), Iowa’s Performance Results Director in the Department of Management.

McMahon said that Iowa went from 64 executive branch agencies in the 1980s to a current 24 as a result of its overall reform efforts. She expressed surprise that Oklahoma has 99 state agencies, with an additional 400 boards and commissions.

Cargill said the Iowa reforms speak to the need for Oklahoma to catch up to the 21st Century streamlining efforts happening elsewhere in the country.

“Oklahoma has been stuck in a horse-and-buggy era of state government since our state's founding,” said Cargill, R-Harrah. “With our centennial celebration underway this week, it’s high time that we moved into the second century of our government.”

“We want to make Oklahoma’s government more efficient,” said Rep. Ken Miller, who as Vice Chairman of the House Appropriations and Budget Committee is spearheading the series of interim study hearings. “We want better state services at a lower cost to taxpayers, and this first set of hearings is a good step in the right direction.”

McMahon said the charter agency reform in Iowa focuses on results instead of rules. Charter agencies can waive administrative rules, retain funds and cut through red tape in purchasing. For example, she said, the Iowa Department of Corrections saved $200,000 simply by creating a new pharmaceutical bidding process, while other agencies saved money on airline ticket purchases.

“There is no one single silver bullet that will reform state government,” said McMahon. “Don't let best get in the way of better. The foundation is about managing for performance and results.”

Iowa has also implemented widespread performance reviews of state agencies, similar to the performance audit of Oklahoma’s Department of Corrections spearheaded by House Republicans this year. Iowa has implemented performance audits across state government, and the state requires agencies to release annual performance reports available for public review online at www.resultsiowa.org.

Cargill noted that State Treasurer Scott Meacham and Governor Brad Henry have consistently opposed performance audits, a concept that has met with bipartisan support in Iowa.

Also Tuesday, lawmakers heard from experts with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.

“Oklahoma has too many state employees,” said Brandon Dutcher, vice president for policy for the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. “I think we have to ask if a relatively poor state like Oklahoma can afford this kind of overhead.”

Dutcher pointed to an analysis performed by OCPA that indicated Oklahoma ranks 5th in the nation for the ratio of public employees versus private sector employees. Oklahoma has 21.45 people employed by state and local government for every 100 employed by the private sector.

Oklahoma’s public employee ratio is 33 percent higher than the national average, according to the OCPA analysis. Regionally, Oklahoma’s rank is only exceeded by one neighboring state -- New Mexico, which has the highest employment ratio of public employees versus private sector employees in the nation.

Dutcher said that if Oklahoma’s employment ratio were at the national average, the state would have 66,000 fewer state and local government employees.

OCPA research fellow and accountant Steve Anderson also outlined several possible agency consolidations, such as the possible merger of some public safety entities, and other cost-saving measures.

Tuesday’s hearing is the first in a series of three that will focus on opportunities for consolidation of agencies, boards and commissions -- as well as possible cost savings through reforms of the state’s purchasing system and technology upgrades.

The hearings come on the heels of three years of fiscally conservative policies that lay the groundwork for the new effort. House Republican leaders have driven a state income tax cut three years in a row, an innovative “Google government” reform to give taxpayers information on the Internet about how their money is spent, and elimination of outdated boards and commissions.

In 2006, Oklahoma ranked first among six comparable states in the number of government entities. The closest any state came to Oklahoma’s whopping 515 agencies, boards and commissions was Kentucky, with 397. The remaining four comparable states – Arkansas, Iowa, Oregon and Kansas – each have less than 200 ABCs.

The hearings will continue on Tuesday, Nov. 20 at 1:30 p.m.

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Brandon Dutcher: Henry Legacy Watch

Blogger Brandon Dutcher is keeping an eye on Governor Henry: "Our gambling governor gave a speech to students in Bartlesville on Wednesday, which could have been a tad awkward for him given that a Bartlesville woman had been arrested the day before for leaving her 5-year-old alone while she went to the casino."

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Child Care Tax Credit A Novel Approach

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that many states give tax credits for child care expenses of families with two working parents, but extending that to stay-at-home parents as is proposed in Oklahoma is a novel approach.

“At this point, we’re not aware of other states with laws like this one,” said Bert Wausanen at the NCSL’s Denver headquarters.

The idea first surfaced a couple of years ago in a joint letter-to-the-editor by Brandon Dutcher of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, a conservative think-tank, and David Dunn, research and projects director for the Oklahoma Family Policy Council, a nonprofit group associated with the national Focus on the Family organization of James Dobson.

Read more in the Joplin Globe or on Dutcher's blog.

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National Review Lauds OCPA Database Push

National Review has lauded the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs for its work in establishing a searchable online database of state contracts and grants.

Here's the publication's report: "One state-based think tank, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA), has adopted another national idea to the state level and thus started a trend of its own. Inspired by the work of Sens. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) and Barack Obama (D., Ill.) on the creation of a searchable online database of federal contracts and grants, OCPA began to push the state legislature to do something similar for taxpayers in Oklahoma. Last October, in an op-ed calling for a state-funding website, Coburn and OCPA vice president Brandon Dutcher wrote, 'Many taxpayers… may be aware that their tax dollars have paid for things like rooster shows and ghost employees and $100 car washes, but these things are just the tip of the iceberg.'

"Since then, the idea has met little resistance from state politicians in either party. On March 1st the state senate unanimously approved the creation of the database, and governor Brad Henry, a Democrat, picked up the idea and included it in his State of the State address this year. The idea is gaining popularity in other states as well. OCPA spokesman Brian Hobbs says, 'We pitched the idea at a Center-Right Coalition meeting. It created a buzz there, and word traveled fast.'

"Legislation enacting state versions of the spending database have been introduced in Maryland, Minnesota, and of course, Tennessee."

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