Let’s start with Mickey’s home in higher education. Unlike most states with a consolidated higher ed system, ours is fragmented, with nearly 30 separate colleges and universities, each with its own president, squadrons of vice presidents, deans, provosts and other administrators and enrollment and business offices. Bring all the two-year colleges under one statewide community […]
op-ed
Posted inNews
Playing politics with prison
And now, only weeks after session adjourned, the governor has forced out our director, Justin Jones, who served the state and the DOC for 36 years. The reason: He resisted efforts to privatize the state’s prison system. Private prison corporations have deep pockets, and the governor and Republican leadership are only so willing to take […]
Posted inNews
Common sense needed on the court
Unfortunately, the result is a backdoor attack on the Legislature’s attempt to limit frivolous and expensive litigation and to improve our business climate. It is interesting to note the two dissenting justices — reviewing the exact same facts and legal theories as the majority — reached the opposite conclusion. This is significant. Judicial philosophy is […]
Posted inNews
Unfortunately, it’s all too conventional
In preparing the MAPS 3 campaign, those who advocated for intensive convention center expansion had two significant problems. First, polling showed overwhelming opposition of 75 to 80 percent. Second, the preposterous conclusion of a 2008 Convention, Sports and Leisure (CS&L) study (never released to the public) was that to triple our existing convention busi ness, […]
Posted inNews
Seeking shelter for students
Now a discussion is under way to decide how to handle state assistance for shelter space. Like many Oklahomans, I knew many who were trapped in at least one of the major tornadoes that struck Oklahoma last month. One of my cousins is a student at Briarwood Elementary in Moore, where his mother, a schoolteacher, […]
Posted inNews
God and tornadoes
Those messages are coming from everywhere. After speaking in Vermont at the annual meeting of United Church of Christ churches in my denomination, this small and cash-strapped body of small New England parishes handed me a check for $5,000 to help with tornado relief. So many people have prayed for us and supported us through […]
Posted inNews
Touting marriage: Why knot?
Using Census Bureau data, researchers Patrick Fagan and Nicholas Zill have determined that only 4 in 10 Oklahoma teenagers (ages 15 to 17) have grown up in an intact married family (i.e., with both their birth mother and their biological father legally married to one another since before or around the time of the teenager’s […]
Posted inNews
Death by a thousand cuts
Oh, but it can. The state Legislature this session passed House Bill 2032 to decrease the maximum Oklahoma personal income tax rate from 5.25 percent to 5 percent in 2015 and then again to 4.85 percent in 2016 if there is sufficient revenue growth. When fully implemented, the Oklahoma Tax Commission estimates the measure will […]
Posted inNews
MAPS for trauma
It was joy and grieving and defiance. I was screaming at Timothy McVeigh and for that baby carried by the firefighter as much as I was yelling for our young team that was making our city proud much sooner than expected. In OKC, it is all wrapped up together, the joy and pain. Now, unfortunately, […]
Posted inNews
To be an Oklahoman
In Oklahoma, when you pop out of your mama, the doctors give you the once-over. They check your eyes, because they know you’re going to have to stare down EF4 tornadoes and not flinch. They check the gravel in your guts, because true grit is making a living from hard, dry land, molding a life […]