StudioTulsa

In the Wake of the Revenue Failure, Discussing the State Budget for This Year and Next

Public Radio Tulsa | By Rich Fisher

Published February 27, 2017 at 6:12 PM CST

Aired on Friday, February 24th.

Earlier this week, on Tuesday the 21st, the State Board of Equalization met in Oklahoma City to approve revised revenue estimates for FY 2017 and FY 2018. The revised estimates for FY 2017 are for revenues to be "under" by some $296 million, or 5.7 percent, and thus a revenue failure has been declared. This is the third time since 2000 that there have been revenue failures for the state budget in two consecutive years; it also happened in 2002-03 and 2009-10. How did the State of Oklahoma (once again) get here? And does the budget outlook for next year look any better? Our guest is Gene Perry, the Policy Director at the nonprofit OK Policy Institute.

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Rich Fisher

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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