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The OK Policy Institute's David Blatt on Gov. Fallin's Recommendations to Fill the State Budget Gap

Aired on Thursday, April 14th.

Yesterday at the State Capitol, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin offered her recommendations to the State Legislature on how to fill next year's estimated $1.3 billion budget deficit. Her "Budget 2.0" provides for exempting Common Education, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, and Mental Health Services from cuts -- while also exempting cuts in other areas, including higher education -- and offers significant revenue enhancements to the budget as well. Our guest today is economist and policy analyst David Blatt, executive director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute, who reviews the governor's recommendations -- how they would work, what they would mean for the state's economy, etc. Blatt also speaks about our anti-Obamacare governor's recently announced plan to extend health care coverage across this state -- namely, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority's Medicaid Rebalancing Act of 2020.

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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