Chicken-Fried News: Put it to music!

Chicken-Fried News: Driving irony
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Oklahoma’s revenue situation is dire. The Oklahoma Board of Equalization recently declared a revenue failure, which means an across-the-board cut of 0.7 percent to all state agencies now through June, according to KOSU.

If that’s not awful enough, let’s talk about the $878 million budget shortfall. Gov. Mary Fallin’s chief budget negotiator released those figures with a cry for help.

“I need you, members, I beg you to have an appreciation for the seriousness of the situation we have before us,” Preston Doerfinger, Oklahoma’s director and secretary of Finance, Administration and Information Technology, told the Oklahoma Board of Equalization.

Fallin, who is one of six members of the board, proposed taxing more than 150 services not currently taxed.

“We have to do something, and standing in the middle of the road and doing nothing is not an option,” Fallin said in a news conference. “It is not working. Our budget is broke, and we’ve got to fix it.”

We at Chicken-Fried News suggest that Doerfinger and Fallin think outside the box for getting their message across. Why? Because everyone loves music! After all, when we remember a song lyric, we remember a message.

For Doerfinger and Fallin’s first recording, we recommend following the tune of “Maria” from The Sound of Music. If memory serves us correctly, by the end of the song, those nuns had a solution to their predicament!

How do you solve a problem like the budget?

How do you fund the state with few revenues?

How do you find a word that means the budget?

A catastrophe!

A stroke of bad luck!

A blow!

Many a thing you know you’d like to tell lawmakers,

Many a thing lawmakers ought to understand,

But how do you make them stay?

And listen to all you say,

How do you tap into revenue?

How do you solve a problem like the budget?

How do you fix Oklahoma for the kids?

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