Editorials
It’s time to stabilize state budget
EDMOND — Much has been made in recent weeks about the projected state revenue forecast for 2008, which will be certified in February. As the nation slides into slower economic times, many in Oklahoma have worried about how to keep the state’s momentum going.
Energy prices have brought the state a windfall in revenue, but history tells us that can and will change quickly.
That’s why we support further exploration of Sen. Kenneth Corn’s budget stabilization proposal. He prepared the same legislation last year, but it never received a hearing in the Oklahoma Legislature. Let’s hope that 2008 brings a different result.
Corn’s proposal, otherwise known as Senate Joint Resolution 5, calls for a constitutional amendment to go before state voters that would “require certification of the 10-year average of gross production tax revenue and would limit appropriations of revenues over that amount to one-time expenditures.”
Corn cites the $277 million in projected revenue growth for the state that now has dwindled to a $32 million growth projection. “It simply makes fiscal sense to avoid basing ongoing expenditures on a source that varies so wildly,” Corn states in a press release. We couldn’t agree more.
It’s time to reconsider how this state budgets its funds, especially in the face of increasing needs in the areas of prison and roads and bridges.
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It’s time to stabilize state budget
Much has been made in recent weeks about the projected state revenue forecast for 2008, which will be certified in February.
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