Perspective - October 2015

October 2015

OKLAHOMA COUNCIL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

What Oklahoma Policymakers Can Learn from the Chickasaws Page 12 Working in the garden at the Chickasaw Cultural Center

In Case You Missed It The results in other states are demonstrating that Oklahoma policymakers were wise to avoid the Obamacare Medicaid expansion trap.

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OCPA distinguished fellow Andrew Spiropoulos says our state constitution cannot reasonably be interpreted to forbid the faithful from benefiting from public services.

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We don’t need to micromanage Oklahoma’s self-dealing boards and commissions—we need to abolish most of them.

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Oklahoma is paying more each year to hire college and university administrators and is paying handsomely for faculty members who teach too few students.

OCPA’s Jonathan Small says taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the National Conference of State Legislatures, a big-government lobbying organization.

OCPA president Michael Carnuccio lauds a new report from the Oklahoma Educated Workforce Initiative and says it’s time to let the education money follow the child.

In light of some disturbing new organ-harvesting videos, federalfunds transparency is more important than ever.

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An OU historian of liberty is critical of the new AP US History framework.

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Looking for better teaching opportunities and more competitive pay, a couple moved to Oklahoma to teach in a public charter school.

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PERSPECTIVE OCPA Staff

OCPA Trustees

Brandon Dutcher ...........................................Editor

Blake Arnold • Oklahoma City

David McLaughlin • Enid

Glenn Ashmore • Oklahoma City

Lew Meibergen • Enid

Robert D. Avery • Pawhuska

Ronald L. Mercer • Bethany

Alex Jones .............................................Art Director

OCPA Researchers

Lee J. Baxter • Lawton

Lloyd Noble II • Tulsa

Sarah Andrews .......................Content Marketing Specialist

Steve W. Beebe • Duncan

Mike O’Neal • Edmond

Michael Carnuccio ...................................................President

John A. Brock • Tulsa

Bill Price • Oklahoma City

Brandon Dutcher .................................Senior Vice President

David R. Brown, M.D. • Oklahoma City

Patrick T. Rooney • Oklahoma City

Trent England ..........Vice President for Strategic Initiatives

Paul A. Cox • Oklahoma City

Melissa Sandefer • Norman

Dacia Harris .........................Development Projects Manager

William Flanagan • Claremore

Thomas Schroedter • Tulsa

Rachel Hays .........................................Development Director

Josephine Freede • Oklahoma City

Richard L. Sias • Oklahoma City

Ann Felton Gilliland • Oklahoma City

Greg Slavonic • Oklahoma City

John T. Hanes • Oklahoma City

Charles M. Sublett • Tulsa

Ralph Harvey • Oklahoma City

Robert Sullivan • Tulsa

John A. Henry III • Oklahoma City

Lew Ward • Enid

Henry F. Kane • Bartlesville

William E. Warnock, Jr. • Tulsa

Alex Jones ......................................Communications Director Trey Malone ....................................... Research Assistant Renae Page ................................................Executive Assistant Jonathan Small ................................Executive Vice President Hannah Wallis ............................Communications Associate

Robert Kane • Tulsa

Dana Weber • Tulsa

Kenny Yoder ................................... Operations Associate

Gene Love • Lawton

Daryl Woodard • Tulsa

Teresa Yoder ........................................Director of Operations

Tom H. McCasland III • Duncan

Daniel J. Zaloudek • Tulsa

Steven J. Anderson, MBA, CPA Research Fellow Tina Dzurisin Research Associate Trent England, J.D. Dr. David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow for the Advancement of Liberty Adam Luck, MPP Research Fellow Jayson Lusk, Ph.D. Samuel Roberts Noble Distinguished Fellow Matt Mayer, J.D. Research Fellow J. Scott Moody, M.A. Research Fellow Andrew C. Spiropoulos, J.D. Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow Wendy P. Warcholik, Ph.D. Research Fellow

Perspective is published monthly by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Inc., an independent public policy organization. OCPA formulates and promotes public policy research and analysis consistent with the principles of free enterprise and limited government. The views expressed in Perspective are those of the author, and should not be construed as representing any official position of OCPA or its trustees, researchers, or employees.

Tuition Hikes and Non-instructional Overhead Students across Oklahoma have returned to college campuses, and many are feeling the pinch from higher tuition costs.

Higher education officials often blame tuition hikes on reduced state appropriations, but could there be other factors in play?

Because Oklahoma’s university system receives state financing, the U.S. Census Bureau keeps track of all types of data on the system. The nearby chart uses Census data to examine the dramatic size and growth in the number of non-instructional workers (per 100 private-sector workers) in Oklahoma’s university system. There are two major points to be gleaned from this chart.

First, Oklahoma’s university system employs 2.72 non-instructional workers—which is a whopping 82 percent higher than the national average and is the 3rd highest level in the country for 2013 (the latest data available).

Second, and even more troubling, the linear growth line shows that the rate of growth in non-instructional workers is higher than the national average.

Overall, this chart strongly suggests that Oklahoma’s policymakers must demand a thorough accounting from university officials not only as to why the state diverges in the size of its non-instructional workforce, but also why it continues to grow faster than the national average.

OCPA research fellow J. Scott Moody (M.A., George Mason University) serves as chief executive officer of State Budget Solutions. Formerly a senior economist at the Tax Foundation and a senior economist at the Heritage Foundation, he has twice testified before the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Moody is the co-creator (with Wendy P. Warcholik) of the Tax Foundation’s popular “State Business Tax Climate Index.” His work has appeared in Forbes, CNN Money, State Tax Notes, The Oklahoman, and several other publications.

OCPA research fellow Wendy P. Warcholik (Ph.D., George Mason University) directs the Family Prosperity Initiative for the American Conservative Union Foundation. She formerly served as an economist at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, and was the chief forecasting economist for the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Medical Assistance Services.

www.ocpathink.org

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have a heart

ARTHUR BROOKS’ BOLD NEW VISION FOR CONSERVATISM Arthur Brooks is becoming ubiquitous. The president of the American Enterprise Institute is visible on cable talk shows, toe to toe in debate with President Obama, and in a string of bestselling books, the latest of which, The Conservative Heart, is yet another how-to part of the Brooks equation for winning the public policy battles to come.

At its heart—an apt description—is some simple advice to those who would seek to roll back the seemingly inexorable march of statism and restore a national reliance on economic and political liberty. In two words, the Brooks prescription in this volume is, “Be happy.”

The book’s subtitle—“how to build a fairer, happier, and more prosperous America”—borrows intentionally from some of the buzzwords our leftist opponents have deployed for so long to dominate, and often win, the combat of ideas.

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Brooks is right when he says conservatives have too often countered those “get happy” platitudes from the left with head, not heart. It may be accurate to cite data showing that the War on Poverty has failed, but it won’t win the ultimate argument until we begin tugging at America’s heartstrings and proposing real, compassionate policies that will help poor people be no longer poor.

The Brooks thesis is simple: free enterprise has prevailed in many parts of the globe, especially since the end of the Cold War, lifting hundreds of millions of people, especially in Asia and other emerging regions, out of poverty. At the same time it has largely failed here at home because of our seemingly unbreakable American addiction to government programs as first, second, and last resorts, even when they are proven to be unworkable.

What has helped much of the rest of humanity emerge from the economic dark ages? Brooks cites at least five reasons: globalization, free trade, the enhancement of property rights, the rule of law, and entrepreneurship. Yet here at home, especially during the Obama years, much of the public discussion of economic issues has focused on “income inequality” and more ways for government to try to address it.

“But the American people do not trust us to put those (conservative) principles into practice,” Brooks writes.

“Capitalism has saved a couple of billion people and we have treated that miracle like a state secret.” One reason

are faith, family, community, and meaningful work.

That begins with a conservative recognition that the social safety net is necessary, but only if we transform it from an ensnaring trap to a trampoline that will allow those who turn to it to declare their economic independence.

The welfare reform movement of the 1990s was a good start, but the Obama administration has eroded and undercut many of those work-focused reforms.

“Why does America keep returning to this stale, ineffective playbook?” Brooks wonders. The answer is that many on the right have done a poor job of selling pro-growth policies in moral terms, as

Conservatives must re-emphasize the “happiness portfolio” —faith, family, community, and meaningful work. is the often dour, get-off-my-lawn tone of the discussion from the right.

It’s clear that the liberal prescription for poverty, first set forth under Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society/War on Poverty policies of the 1960s, has failed. Brooks notes that while the post-war economic boom of the 1950s trimmed America’s poverty rate from 25 percent in 1950 to 14.7 percent by 1966, those figures have barely budged in the decades since— and that since the Great Recession of 2008, occupants of the bottom quintile on America’s economic ladder have actually done worse.

“By any fair standards,” he says, “the government’s war on poverty would be classified as a failure.”

What to replace it with?

“Conservatives,” he says, “should be optimists who believe in people.” That means re-emphasizing what he calls his “happiness portfolio,” four traditional ingredients that worked very well for decades before government muddied up the water. Those four pedestals

the right thing to do for the poor.

People, Brooks says, should be treated as assets, not liabilities, with room to grow and improve their lives.

He cites a number of instructive new programs, none of them emanating from government, that have created enviable success records in helping poor people escape from poverty and its many pathologies. Work must once again be regarded as a blessing and not punishment, Brooks adds. Americans should remember that values matter, that help and hope are two sides of the same value, and that step one is to reverse the trend toward what he calls “learned helplessness.”

The alternative is decline into the sad state of modern Europe, with its economic stagnation due to generations of social welfare policies, low birthrates, and general despair.

Start, he says, by co-opting that leftist term “social justice” and emphasizing real justice is about giving people opportunities, not the dole.

“An opportunity society has two basic building blocks,” he writes. “First is an education system that creates a base of human capital.” Brooks here calls for an emphasis on conservative education reforms like school choice and performance pay for educators.

“Second comes an economic system that rewards hard work, merit, innovation, and personal responsibility.”

Brooks suggests that the Tea Party movement, as it morphs from “protest movement to social movement,” will help steer those policies. He also cites seven habits of truly effective conservatives—be a moralist about policies, be for people, get happy, steal the other side’s best arguments (like social justice), go where we have not been welcome to expand the battlefield, say things in 30 seconds to be precise and clear, and break those old bad habits like “get off my lawn” griping.

Encouragingly, a number of next year’s most promising presidential hopefuls like Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, and others are already echoing many of these themes. We and they owe much to Arthur Brooks, who is rapidly becoming a Pied Piper of common social and economic sense.

Mike Brake is a journalist and writer who recently authored a centennial history of Putnam City Schools. He served as chief writer for Gov. Frank Keating and for then-Lt. Gov. and Congresswoman Mary Fallin, and has also served as an adjunct instructor at OSU-OKC.

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Four Reasons a Sales Tax Hike Is a Bad Idea In America, public education was traditionally funded by local governments through the property tax. Unfortunately, over time, the educational system has become increasingly centralized. In Oklahoma, for example, the largest portion (48 percent) of school district revenue comes from the state, according to an April 2015 report from the Oklahoma Office of Educational Quality and Accountability. Only 40.2 percent of revenue comes from local and county sources, while 11.7 percent is provided by the federal government.

Some Oklahomans are talking about centralizing the system even further by providing additional financing through an increased sales tax. This is a bad idea for several reasons.

First, Oklahoma already has the 6th highest state-andlocal sales tax in the country, according to data from the Tax Foundation. Increasing the sales tax will not only put a pinch on consumers, it will also hurt Oklahoma’s small businesses, which are the backbone of the economy.

According to a recent study from the Council on State Taxation, 47 percent of the current sales tax is paid by businesses when they invest. By taxing investment, Oklahoma will create fewer job opportunities for future graduates.

Second, the sales tax would erode transparency within the educational system. Unless one

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is extremely meticulous about keeping every single sales receipt, it is nearly impossible for parents to understand how much they are supporting the educational system. As such, it becomes harder to do an effective cost-benefit analysis.

Third, as communities become more reliant on the sales tax, it will open the door for a more centralized educational system based in Oklahoma City instead of the local school board. This will make it more difficult for parents and students to influence the quality of their school.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, there’s little reason to believe more money will improve Oklahoma’s educational performance.

Cato Institute scholar Andrew Coulson, using a time-series regression approach, recently looked at Oklahoma’s SAT scores (adjusted for participation rate and demographics) and NAEP scores and found there is “essentially no link” between state education spending and student performance (see chart).

In sum, increasing the sales tax to pay for public education in Oklahoma is not a path to a better system.

Economists J. Scott Moody (M.A., George Mason University) and Wendy P. Warcholik (Ph.D., George Mason University) are OCPA research fellows.

ESAs Could Be a Game-Changer for Oklahoma Parents This back-to-school season marks the fifth year Arizona parents have exercised the freedom to decide not just where but how their children are educated thanks to the state’s groundbreaking education savings account (ESA) program.

Florida became the second state to enact ESAs, in 2014, followed by Mississippi, Tennessee, and Nevada earlier this year.

Oklahoma is conspicuously absent from this list because the state legislature failed to act.

ESAs are the latest advance in educational choice, fostering an unprecedented level of personalized learning opportunities for students customized by those who know and love them best: their parents.

The ESA concept is simple. Parents who do not prefer a public school for their child simply withdraw him or her, and the state deposits funds it would have sent to the school into that child’s ESA instead. Parents receive a type of dedicated-use debit card for authorized expenses including private school tuition, online courses, testing fees, tutoring, special education therapies, and more. Any leftover funds remain in the child’s ESA for future education expenses, including college.

ESA funds are disbursed quarterly, but only after parents submit expense reports with receipts for verification.

Regular audits also help prevent misspending. If parents misuse funds they forfeit their child’s ESA and must repay misused funds or face legal prosecution.

So far ESAs have helped nearly

3,000 Arizona and Florida specialneeds students. Since 2011, Arizona has expanded program eligibility to students in failing public schools, children from the foster care system, children of active-duty military parents, including those whose parents were killed in the line of duty, and children who reside on Indian reservations.

Florida also expanded its program this year by making more students with disabilities eligible and tripling funding to $54 million.

Newly enacted programs in Tennessee and Nevada are even more expansive because they fully fund special-needs students’ ESAs rather than withholding 10 percent as Arizona, Florida, and Mississippi do.

Nevada’s ESA is far and away the most expansive program to date because it makes virtually all public school students eligible, not just those with special needs or circumstances.

If results to date from Arizona and Florida’s targeted ESA programs are any indication, Nevada’s universal program will be the one to watch.

Having the freedom to customize their children’s learning has resulted in an unprecedented 100 percent ESA program satisfaction rating among participating Arizona parents. Program demand is also strong, roughly doubling each year.

Parents in Arizona and Florida report their children are performing better academically and socially because their ESAs enable them to customize instruction and related services.

Students at risk of dropping out of high school are now heading off to college.

Younger children who were years behind are now performing at grade level. ESAs are truly, as one parent put it, “a game-changer.”

Such results are not surprising.

Research has long shown that disadvantaged students attending schools of their parents’ choice perform better in reading and math, have higher high school graduation rates and college attendance rates, and higher college graduation rates than their peers who do not participate in choice programs.

Competition for students also results in documented improvements in public school student and school performance.

Sixty years ago Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman argued that just because we finance education through government, that does not mean that elected officials in government know what type of education is best for other people’s children.

“Education spending will be most effective,” Friedman insisted, “if it relies on parental choice and private initiative—the building blocks of success throughout our society.”

There is no good reason Oklahoma schoolchildren should be denied the personalized educational opportunities a growing number of students in other states now have because of ESAs. Oklahoma state lawmakers should enact universal ESAs. Vicki Alger (Ph.D., University of Dallas) is a research fellow at the Independent Institute and a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.

She is currently working on a book examining the 30-year history of the U.S. Department of Education.

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Choosing Choice Is Choosing Families Education debates are going back to their roots. The big education debates of the 21st century are shaping up along lines similar to those of the education debates of the 19th century. If we continue in this direction, we will rediscover that at the root of our education debates is a debate about the family. The government school monopoly is one of the most important factors undermining the family unit; universal school choice would be a big step toward strengthening the family.

In the 20th century, the big debates in education were mostly one form or another of the same question: “How can we, the professional class of education experts employed by the technocratic state, most effectively raise other people’s children to conform to our values and expectations?” The big question that had rocked education in the 19th century was forgotten—it was thought to be settled forever. Parents had full authority to direct the rearing of children until age 5; after that point, the technocratic state had primary authority to direct their rearing, and parents were relegated to a supporting role.

Only a few eccentric people in the 20th century, like Milton Friedman, knew enough to continue asking the big question of the 19th century: Is it actually a good idea for the technocratic state to supplant parents as the primary authority in the rearing of children?

This was not a question of whether there ought to be schools. It was a question of whom the schools should work for. Are schools an extension of the family, helping parents raise their children the way the parents want them raised? Or are schools an autonomous branch of the technocratic state, answering not to parents but to professional experts who know how children ought to be raised better than parents do?

There were schools in this country before the 19th century, but they were not creatures of the technocratic state. There was no technocratic state. Schools were responsible to parents.

The rise of the technocratic state in the 19th century forced upon us a great debate about the future of schooling. But by the end of the 19th century, the debate seemed settled forever in favor of the technocrats, and the question was mostly forgotten.

It is not forgotten anymore. The two big debates in education today are over parental choice and federal

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centralization of power over schools. Both these debates are about the authority of parents versus the authority of technocrats. We are—slowly, and for the most part without realizing what is going on—reopening the big question of whom schools ought to work for.

It was the failure of the government school monopoly in the 20th century that brought us back to the big question of the 19th. School choice and federal centralization of power are both responses to this failure. Some are seeking to reverse course, hoping that the moribund school system can be revitalized by putting parents back in charge. Others are seeking a stronger technocracy that will be more capable of achieving its goals.

The failure of the monopoly consists in three things.

Educational quality has remained frozen in place at a totally unacceptable level; we cannot continue trying to face the challenges of the 21st century with the schools of the 19th. A self-serving “blob” of special interest groups has colonized the monopoly system, consuming more and more money each year at the expense of both taxpayers and the public fisc.

And, most importantly, as the American cultural environment becomes more pluralistic, a monopoly school system is incapable of raising children with good character; it cannot give children a good reason to be good without violating the First Amendment.

However, a failed school system is not the only damage done by the government monopoly. The family itself is also undermined.

In his masterpiece The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom pointed out that the collapse of the family in the second half of the 20th century occurred because the family had long since become “spiritually empty.” The sexual revolution and all the family-destroying forces it unleashed— above all, easy divorce—would never have seemed plausible or legitimate to people if they still had a sense that the family unit mattered profoundly. Their understanding of what the family was for had decayed to the point where marriage, for many, no longer seemed to be worth saving—and even those who did want to save it found they didn’t know how to make a case for it. They were left simply shouting and fuming.

So how did the family become spiritually empty in the first half of the 20th century, such that it was ready to collapse

At the root of our education debates is a debate about the family. The government school monopoly is one of the most important factors undermining the family unit; universal school choice would be a big step toward strengthening it. by the second half? Many factors were in play, but the government school monopoly was a major one. The family was no longer of vital importance for childrearing.

Old-fashioned people might admonish parents to “stay together for the children,” but in the 20th century this timeworn phrase no longer connected with parents’ own experience. Why was an intact home so important to the kids?

They spent more waking hours at school—where the home is seen as irrelevant.

At a deeper level, the social order had been inverted. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the family had been understood as the primary unit of society; larger political and economic structures existed to mediate relations between households, not between individuals as such. Relations between individuals within a household—such as the work of childrearing—were the family’s business, except in extreme cases. All that was now gone. The family was no longer primary; the technocratic state was primary.

School choice would be a big step toward strengthening the family. It would reassert the primacy of parents over every stage of education until the point where children leave home and gain the rights of adulthood. In short, if we want people to treat the home as if it mattered to the biggest things in life, we might start by making it actually matter to those things.

It’s unfortunate that the school choice movement is mostly

a coalition of progressives and libertarians. Conservatives who care about the family ought to be equally important in its ranks. And they would provide an important mediating influence. As school choice programs continue to become more universal—less restricted to poor children alone— tensions are heating up in the movement.

Progressives are uncomfortable with universal choice.

Libertarians, with their rhetoric of individual self-interest, struggle to make a case they find convincing. But progressives care deeply about the poor, and they increasingly recognize that the collapse of the family is destroying the poor.

Conservatives who care about the family could make a case for universal choice that they might find more compelling.

Greg Forster (Ph.D., Yale University) is a senior fellow with the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. He is the author of six books, including John Locke’s Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It (Crossway Books, 2014). He has written numerous articles in peer-reviewed academic journals as well as in popular publications such as the Washington Post and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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GAS TAX FACTS The first gas tax in the United States was enacted in 1919 by the State of Oregon. The federal tax began in 1932, when Congress created a temporary one cent per gallon gas tax. From that humble beginning, Congress has continuously extended and expanded the tax. Revenue was not earmarked for transportation until 1956, when Congress raised the gas tax to three cents per gallon and directed all the revenue to pay for construction of the new interstate highways.

The federal gas tax was then set to revert to the previous rate of 1.5 cents per gallon in 1972.

Federal transportation planners had promised to complete the interstate highways by the end of the 1960s. Yet Congress would raise and extend the tax three more times until, in 1993, it reached 18.4 cents per gallon.

Ironically, that was also the year the interstate highway system was declared complete.

Today, the federal excise tax on gasoline remains 18.4 cents per gallon; the tax on diesel is 24.4 cents per gallon (numbers include the 0.1 cent Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund tax).

Liquefied natural gas and most liquid fuels derived from coal or biomass are taxed at the diesel rate; compressed natural gas is taxed at the gasoline rate. Because of past political bargains, most of those taxes are set to expire on September 30, 2016, dropping the tax rate for both fuels to 4.3 cents per gallon.

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Cut the Federal Gas Tax The Federal Highway Trust Fund is running out of money, causing even some Republicans to consider a federal gas tax increase. There is no need, however, to keep funneling billions of transportation dollars through Washington, D.C. A better idea, already introduced in Congress, is to cut the federal tax and let states make up the difference.

Congress first levied a tax on gasoline in 1932 as a way to reduce the federal deficit in the midst of the Great Depression. This one cent per gallon tax was set to expire in one year. Rather than allowing it to expire, however, Congress has routinely extended and occasionally raised the rate of the gas tax.

Since 1993, the federal tax on gasoline has been 18.4 cents per gallon; the tax on diesel

Aleph Studio / Shutterstock.com

is 24.4 cents per gallon. Most of that revenue is directed to the Highway Trust Fund. Gas tax collections grew rapidly during the 1990s. More recently, revenue has flat-lined.

Spending, however, has continued to grow. Politicians in Washington, D.C., have spent transportation dollars faster than they have taken them from taxpayers. When the Fund has come up short, Congress has transferred other dollars into it (from other taxes and from borrowing) rather than cutting back on spending.

The trouble with federal transportation spending is the spending. Both Congress and the U.S. Department of Transportation have gone forward with plans to spend the fuel tax revenues they desire rather than the revenues they are likely to collect. Funds are often directed to pet projects, the kind of pork Oklahoma’s former Sen. Tom Coburn became famous for exposing. Even worse, some federal policies intentionally drive up project costs.

The federal prevailing wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act, was adopted in 1931 to prevent black Americans moving out of the South from “taking” jobs from unionized white workers in the North. It locks in artificially inflated wage rates on projects paid for from the Highway Trust Fund. The Obama Administration has also pushed a similar policy through “project labor agreements.” These mandates on government contractors also lock in above-market prices. Both policies force taxpayers to pay more for less.

While some states have similarly wasteful policies, Oklahoma does not. Yet when federal gas tax dollars come back to states like Oklahoma, they bring federal policies with them. Even when state and county governments are picking up some of the tab, with federal funds in the mix, federal policies like Davis-Bacon drive up the cost of the entire project. All this is on top of whatever other strings might be attached to particular federal funding programs.

A better way to support our transportation infrastructure would be to keep more of our gas tax dollars closer to home. There is already a plan in Congress to do that, the Transportation Empowerment Act, by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA). Their bill would phase down the federal gas tax to 3.7 cents per gallon and transfer back

Let’s keep our gas tax dollars, and the power to decide how to spend them, here in Oklahoma. nearly all power over transportation to state and local governments. Those governments would raise their own gas taxes to make up for lost federal revenue.

Such a change would protect taxpayers from wasteful federal policies and other meddling from afar. It would shift transportation decision-making away from faceless federal bureaucracies and return it to people you or I might come across at a neighborhood meeting or in the grocery store.

The interstate highway system was completed in 1993. The time has come to keep our gas tax dollars, and the power to decide how to spend them, here at home.

Trent England (J.D., George Mason University) is vice president for strategic initiatives at OCPA, where he also serves as the David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow for the Advancement of Liberty. A former legal policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, England has contributed to two books, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution and One Nation under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and numerous other publications.

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What Oklahoma’s Political Leaders Can Learn from the Chickasaws

By Steve Anderson

This article is the fourth in a multi-part series on “Reviving Rural Oklahoma.”

—Editor

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Photos provided by the Chickasaw Nation

In the previous article in this series, which appeared last month in these pages, we discussed some existing programs which could provide a reliable market for Oklahoma highvalue-crop growers, produce better health outcomes for welfare recipients, and substantially reduce fraud in public assistance programs.

It may surprise policymakers to know that some of the program changes we have suggested are already being done quite well in Oklahoma—but not by Oklahoma’s state government.

Many Oklahomans have seen the television commercials the Chickasaw Nation runs about the heritage and continuing success of the tribe and its members. What some

Schools’ Farm to School program. Here is the story of that success from the school official in charge: “We have implemented school gardens. We have used fresh ingredients from such gardens in the cafeteria. Taste tests have been held with surveys used to identify likeability. We purchased equipment for the cafeterias. We have purchased books about nutrition and farming for the school libraries. We have also purchased nutrition information to hand out to the students to take home to their parents. We have really tried to use this grant to educate the students [and their parents] about eating local healthy foods.”

Nowhere is there mention of putting produce from local or state farmers in front of Oklahoma school children.

may not know is that the Chickasaws run and staff their own social welfare programs. Federally recognized tribes have the right to apply for many of the same federal social welfare programs as the state in lieu of having their tribal members participate in the equivalent state version. The Chickasaws have one of the most comprehensive assistance programs of any tribe. What sets their programs apart from Oklahoma’s state-run programs is how they approach delivering services.

We have noted that while 28 percent of Oklahoma school districts say they are participating in the Farm to School program, only $4.5 million of the $40 million in school lunches served in 2011-2012 consisted of local produce. Why this low penetration rate for Oklahoma farmers into this market?

It starts to make sense when you see some of the approaches to Farm to School taken by public schools. For example, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture has a page of “success stories” on the state’s Farm to School website. One of those success stories is the Pryor Public

Compare that to how the Chickasaw Nation operates its Farm to School Program. The focus of the Chickasaws’ program is on pairing local farmers with area schools to bring locally grown fruits and vegetables to school menus within the Chickasaw Nation’s jurisdiction. The following list of program options shows the approach the Chickasaw tribal leaders use to turn that mission statement into a reality: 1.

2.

3.

Quarterly meetings for school district food service directors to train in areas of forecasting purchases, menu planning, procurement, and distribution.

They help set up networks between schools and provide culinary training for cafeteria staff by the chefs from Chickasaw Nation Medical Center’s Okchamali’s Café.

They provide the conduit for local farmers to share information on fruits and vegetables desired by school cafeterias, extended growing seasons, and best

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The Chickasaw model: 4.

practices for growing and harvesting and sanitizing crops for distribution.

They also provide nutrition education to third and fourth grade students through their “Get Fresh” Nutrition Adventure series.

The Chickasaws seem to have grasped that this program is about local farmers providing healthy produce to local schools. It’s not about buying library books on nutrition and farming. Is it any wonder that, even though the state Agriculture Department recognizes that “with 1,844 schools serving students more than 167,000 breakfasts and over 375,000 lunches every day of the school year, the potential size of the market could be substantial,” so little is being purchased from Oklahoma growers?

In previous articles in this series we discussed the potential for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to become a large buyer of Oklahoma high-value crops. The Chickasaw approach to the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), which is the alternative to the state SNAP program, gives some guidance as to how the state program could begin to accomplish that goal.

The stated goals of FDPIR—to “promote the health and well-being of the Indian population by raising nutrition levels among low-income households”—are similar to the goals of the state’s SNAP. Benefits are essentially the same, including “nutrition education, food demonstrations, cooking classes, and food packages with a wide variety of food choices, including fresh produce and frozen meats.”

How the tribe goes about achieving those goals is what separates the tribe from the SNAP approach.

FDPIR provides commodity foods which are available through Food Distribution program grocery stores’ nutrition centers. Participants in the program may shop on the day of their choice at the store’s nutrition centers which carry those items that are qualified for the program. By focusing on delivering those grocery items that are within the Chickasaws’ nutrition centers’ guidelines, the tribe can reasonably believe their dollars are putting the right type of food on needy citizens’ tables. Contrast that with the SNAP program, which spends roughly $600 million per year in Oklahoma; the federal agency in charge of oversight, the United States Department of Agriculture, admits it has no idea what type of food items are being purchased.

The problems with SNAP don’t stop with the types of food recipients are purchasing. Those over 60 will probably remember when the food stamp program provided commodities instead of providing debit cards, as is the practice today. The ability to use these electronic benefit cards (called EBTs) in different ways has created an informal economy in which food stamps are turned into cash or used to buy liquor, gasoline, or other items besides

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PERSPECTIVE • October 2015

Assisting the needy, reducing fraud, and helping Oklahoma growers build a high-value-crop base. food. Even when using some of the lower estimates of the rate of fraud, roughly $3 billion in fraudulent activity takes place annually in the program.

Imagine if Oklahoma turned away from a delivery system which is plagued with fraud and which cannot identify what is being delivered and instead went to a “Chickasaw model.” Oklahoma vegetable and fruit growers and livestock producers could apply to have their products added to the list of approved items and keep part of that half a billion dollars in Oklahoma producers’ pockets—all while ensuring that those Oklahomans needing assistance are receiving high-quality, nutritious food products.

Perhaps we’re seeing movement in that direction.

According to a July 7 story in The Oklahoman, Oklahoma has begun providing tokens that represent $1 of money from a recipient’s SNAP account to buy fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers’ markets. The program is still small, but the provision of Oklahoma-grown fresh produce has expanded from $13,000 and two participating farmers’ markets in 2010 to almost $50,000 and 36 participating farmers’ markets in 2014.

While the size of the program is small, the success stories are promising. Toscamala Ferris uses her tokens at the OSU-OKC Farmers’ Market. She lives on roughly $800 per month from a disability check and says, “I have less than $50 cash left by the time I’m done paying everything. That’s not enough money to eat for a month.” But over the past two years, according to Ms. Ferris, she has lost 130 pounds and is eating healthier thanks in part to the program.

Assisting the needy, reducing fraud, and helping Oklahoma growers build a high-value-crop base should be a plan all Oklahomans can support. Let’s hope those in the state Capitol building are listening.

Steve Anderson (MBA, University of Central Oklahoma) is an OCPA research fellow. A Certified Public Accountant with more than 30 years of experience in private practice, he is currently a partner at Anderson, Reichert & Anderson LLC. Anderson spent two years as a budget analyst in the Oklahoma Office of State Finance, and most recently served as budget director for the State of Kansas. At one time he held 17 state teaching certifications, ranging from mathematics to physics to business.

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@OCPAthink 1. U.S. Representative Jim Bridenstine (right) discusses parental choice in education with OCPA’s Brandon Dutcher on July 20 in Tulsa. “Parents have the moral right to determine the educational course of their children,” Bridenstine says. “This is a human rights issue.”

2. The 6,500-square-foot Advance Center for Free Enterprise, adjacent to OCPA, is now open. The Center will host lawmakers, executive-branch officials, and policy staffers for training sessions on how to apply core principles to difficult public-policy issues. The Center will also be a valuable resource for students as OCPA partners with schools and nonprofit organizations to host programs teaching students the principles of liberty and the importance of our free-enterprise system.

3. At a recent meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in San Diego, OCPA’s Jonathan Small (right) sat down to discuss Oklahoma policy victories with Travis Brown, co-author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of States: How Taxes, Energy, and Worker Freedom Change Everything (Wiley, 2014). Watch the video discussion at ocpa.us/ALECvideo.

4. The Academy of Classical Christian Studies, a private school in Oklahoma City, held an informational back-to-school meeting on August 14 in OCPA’s Advance Center for Free Enterprise. OCPA makes the facility available to outside groups on a rental basis.

www.ocpathink.org

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QUOTE UNQUOTE “20.9 percent” The membership decline in the Oklahoma Education Association over the past five years

“The public schools in this country are failing millions of kids... Are we going to continue to tolerate school systems that put the interests of adults ahead of children?”

AEI president Arthur Brooks, in his new book The Conservative Heart

“I knew she could do the job. For what I wanted out of this position, I knew of no other candidate that could provide that for me.”

Luther Public Schools superintendent Sheldon Buxton (annual compensation: $96K), explaining why he created a $65K “dean of students” position and then hired his wife for the job

“You must know that since the beginning of the world a wise prince is a mighty rare bird, and an upright prince even rarer. They are generally the biggest fools or the worst scoundrels on earth; therefore, one must constantly expect the worst from them and look for little good, especially in divine matters which concern the salvation of souls.”

Martin Luther

“Oklahomans didn’t elect conservatives to pass bills that result in higher taxes and health insurance premiums. ... You can’t make government smaller if you don’t reject schemes to make it bigger.”

OCPA distinguished fellow Andrew Spiropoulos, explaining why Oklahoma should reject the Obamacare Medicaid expansion