Month: May 2018

Statue of Meredith “Music Man” Wilson, Mason City, IA, ID’d by Tom Spencer

In a May 22, 2018 post Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs contributor Mike Brake extolls the virtues of our southern neighbors and oozes Texas Envy  through commentary about the Fort Worth school district’s billboards inviting Oklahoma teachers to cross the Red River and sign up.  He includes comments from a Fort Worth Schools spokesman as support for frequent OCPA talking points about which I’ll now comment.

Brake reports Fort Worth focuses on teacher pay, making that a priority.  The events in Oklahoma this past legislative session should make it clear that Oklahoma districts, if the resources were available, want to do the same, but Brake is not convinced.  He demonstrates Texas’ priority by citing this 2016-17 data from TXsmartschools.org to show that 61% of their $50.8 billion in education dollars go to instruction:

He compares that 61% to the 53.7% cited by the Oklahoma Office of Educational Quality and Accountability for 2015-2016.  The clear message is that if Oklahoma school districts just cared as much about putting dollars in the classroom, our teachers would be paid more.  Here’s the OEQA chart:

But interstate data comparisons are problematic for many reasons that a real research and policy organization would take care to point out.  I looked for low hanging fruit that might narrow the gap and can only document $64 million of capital (function 4000) expenditures included in the OEQA calculation that should be removed for comparability which increases Oklahoma’s percentage to 54.4%.  I’m confident further inquiry would turn up other discrepancies that make Brake’s comparison useless because data for both states, compiled using the same methodology, from the National Center for Education Statistics tells a very different story, the most recent year being 2013-14.  Here it is:

The calculations in the margin are mine, showing Instruction Expenditures as a percentage both of Total Current Expenditures for which the Texas-Oklahoma gap narrows from 7.3% down to 3.7% and almost disappears to 0.5% using Total Expenditures—must be that Friday Night Lights stadiums in Texas put Catoosa press boxes and Owasso turf to shame (the primary difference between Current and All is capital expenditures, you know–classrooms).

So here’s the real difference, with a simple calculation to illustrate.  The most recent (2013-14) Oklahoma State Department of Education Annual Report shows Oklahoma districts employ just over 52,000 certified staff.  Funding an average raise of about $6,100, which Mr. Brake says would put Oklahoma pretty close to Texas’ average teacher salary, costs (with 17% for employer burdens) about $370 million.  If at least 85% of that goes to Instruction it raises Oklahoma’s percentage of the Total Current Expenditures using NCES data to 58.1%, essentially even with Texas.

See the game here, the classic chicken or egg.  “Teacher salaries would be higher in Oklahoma if only we prioritized Instruction”; or is it “Adequately funding teacher salaries in Oklahoma is the right way to increase spending on Instruction.”  Translated, our teacher salaries are low because our teacher salaries are low.

Next Brake’s Texas Envy really kicks in arguing that if only Oklahoma relied more on property taxes like Texas does then we too could have Texas sized teacher pay.  Here’s how he says it:

“If Oklahoma schools received the same dollar amount in both state and federal funds—and if local areas increased their share of support to K-12 public schools (from 42 percent to 49 percent) to match the share local areas contribute in Texas—it would result in an additional $824 million in support for local schools.”

Besides Texas Envy he doesn’t explain why this would be an improvement (other than a nod to stability with not a word about inequity).  My response, as the song lyrics go, “You really ought to give Iowa a try.”  Their teacher salaries are higher even than Texas salaries and they get there with 51.7% coming from state revenues.  Using Brake’s logic all we’ve got to do is keep our federal and local revenues the same and push our state share a percent higher than Iowa’s and we gain the same $824 million.  The algebra is simple, though it apparently impresses Brake.  Either way what he proposes is raising taxes by $824 million.

Then he doubles down on his discovery that increasing the share of spending that goes to Instruction is also a way to increase teacher pay and lower class size by advocating a 65% requirement.  Such a simple statement, devoid of any definitions or specifics, is just bluster and adds little to the conversation.  I explained why such simplicity doesn’t cut it in How Do I Leap The (60% that is)? Let Me Count The Ways .

He advocates school district consolidation with which I have no quarrel because I suspect it can improve opportunities for students; I doubt it will fund teacher pay raises.  Where’s the OCPA’s consolidation proposal?

After this, salivating envy, he lauds a series of statements by the Fort Worth spokesman:

Texas, with its anti-union traditions, doesn’t permit school employees to bargain collectively.  Though if increasing teacher compensation is the goal, I suspect teacher pay is highest in states where private sector unions are the strongest.

Texas has an elementary class size requirement of 22.  Is Brake aware that Oklahoma law, written almost 30 years ago ( House Bill 1017 25th Anniversary  and Once Upon A Time ), requires 20, but Oklahoma funding, decimated by OCPA style state finance, doesn’t support it ( see this on my friend Rick Cobb’s blog:  https://okeducationtruths.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/remembering-hb-1017/  ).

And, of course, the real source of Texas Envy—it has no income tax.  Brake clearly interjected that thought into the conversation and opines that our Okie going south would “get an extra 5% raise” because there is no income tax.  This, despite the fact that the Oklahoma income tax on $52,000, single, standard deduction, one exemption is $2,045 which is 3.9%, not 5—but I haven’t read an OCPA Limited Thinker yet who really makes facts a priority.  Also our fleeing teacher will need to prepare for property taxes that are double the rate in Oklahoma.

It’s a good thing that Brake calls attention to the Fort Worth billboards; hopefully the good work of our legislature is sustained and the $52,000 seems less attractive to Oklahoma teachers.  It’s a bad thing though that Brake, on behalf of a supposed “research and policy” organization that is financed by tax exempt donations, continues to put out poorly researched misinformation.  It is fine for the OCPA to advocate for greater reliance on property taxes, even with local options as Texas appears to have, but to do so repeatedly with no mention of the vast inequities in property tax valuations among school districts or the years of litigation that have embroiled Texas school finance over those inequities, is simply not informed or honest work.

One more good thing, maybe having seen the TXsmartschools.org data they will reform their own data tool and get rid of their double counting and inflated numbers.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.

 

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs has a new look to their website and one would hope that would come with a new commitment to accuracy and thoughtful analysis—not holding my breath.  The lead page is “2018 Legislative Victories” which lists two for Education, “Funding Silos” referring to SJR 70 about which I’ve written before ( The Bice Is Not Right , Trent’s Double Fault and  SJR 70, A Solution In Search Of A Problem ) and “Union Opt Outs”, referring to SB 960, about which I have not written, though I have been a card carrying member of both the OEA and AFT, engaged in a legal strike of several weeks, and crossed picket lines when it became illegal.  I suspect SB 960 is some ALEC legislation which Stink Tanks are expected to promote in the name of liberty, freedom and the right of workers to remain poor.  Still I will leave this issue to others or another day.

What’s most notable about this short list is that it says nothing about the historic Education legislation increasing teacher and support employee compensation OR the funding measures passed to pay for those increases.  This despite the OCPA’s “support” during the process for an increase, yes INCREASE, in the gross production tax.  Back to this later.

I worry, too much probably, about the Fellows at the OCPA who, surpassed only by their Texas envy, are obsessed with Oklahoma’s school funding “silos” and have convinced themselves that they are a major barrier to properly funding public education in our state.  Their obsession is either an intentional distraction from the real barrier, inadequate resources, or shows their failure to comprehend how Oklahoma’s schools are financed.  I’ll try one more time; here’s what they write, emphasis added:

“The Legislature adopted Senate Joint Resolution 70, which will let Oklahomans vote to begin breaking down the funding silos in our state’s public education system. If voters pass SJR 70 on the statewide ballot later this year, local voters and school boards will gain new flexibility with a portion of local school ad valorem funds. Money that would typically be available to school districts only for buildings and athletic facilities could also be used for teacher pay, textbooks, classroom supplies, or whatever a school district needs most. (This measure would not apply to bond funding.)” 

Contrast “buildings and athletic facilities” with this statutory language stating what the 5 mill Building Fund levy can actually be used for:

“…may be used for erecting, remodeling, repairing, or maintaining school buildings, for purchasing furniture, equipment and computer software to be used on or for school district property, for repairing and maintaining computer systems and equipment, for paying energy and utility costs, for purchasing telecommunications utilities and services, for paying fire and casualty insurance premiums for school facilities, for purchasing security systems, for paying salaries of security personnel, or for one or more, or all, of such purposes.”

Using FY 2016 data the Building Fund 5 mill levy, statewide, accounted for about $161 million of just over $5,110 million in new revenue received by school districts in the four primary “silos”, being their General, Co-op, Building and Child Nutrition funds.  Of that $161 million, here is how 90.3% of it was used:

There’s maybe $15 million, at best, statewide that would have been “freed up” by SJR 70, being less than a third of one percent of the new operational revenue for Oklahoma school districts.  I may vote for its passage, mainly because it should bring focus on the huge disparity in property tax capacity among school districts; still there’s little there, there.  What is truly in play is not a silo, it’s barely a grain sack left in the barn.

Additionally–and here I opine with no research other than having read SJR70 and my memory–I am not sure that if the Constitution is amended that the building fund will immediately be available for the proposed “operations” without each district holding a new election to activate the broader definition.   My logic is that the current five mill levies were specifically voted on as “building fund for erecting, remodeling or repairing school buildings, and for purchasing furniture”.  So perhaps districts who want to take advantage of the new language will be required to “reauthorize” its levy with a new election.  If that is the case I suspect few will risk doing so since, as I’ve shown, there is already great flexibility available.

After the OCPA takes its victory lap for having found a grain sack outside one of those silos, where might they turn next? Here is a succinct and accurate summary using new revenue for FY2017.

 

The “logic” behind the silo complaint alleged by the OCPA has been that there’s plenty of money for teacher raises if only districts could look beyond their General fund where most teachers’ compensation is funded to all the other silos that have money being wasted on frills and unnecessary stuff.  So what’s in each those mysterious silos that befuddle the good fellows?

Co-op Fund:  This is primarily for instructional and student support programs that school districts manage together in the interest of efficiency.  Expenditures are simply an extension of the districts’ general funds and reported separately because multiple districts are mixed together.

Building Fund:  Already 90% same as the general fund, may soon be 100%.

Child Nutrition Fund:  This is primarily federal funds AND families’ payments with some state matching mixed in—all earmarked to feed students, not to pay teachers.  You could take away the accounting silo (it has its own function coding) but not one more dime would be made available for teacher salaries.

MAPS  & Municipal Funds:  Very few districts receive this local money about which I know little and at 0.1% not enough to fill a grain sack much less a silo.

Bond & Sinking Funds:  Here’s the there, there, where Texas envy meets Silos.  If you read an OCPA rant that shows amounts way greater than the $681 million reported, being 11.2% of total new revenue that year then they’re double counting again ( Double, Double, Toil and Trouble  ) and don’t merit your attention.  Bond funds are borrowed money approved by local voters in each district; the Sinking fund is property taxes used to pay the loans back.  It is presently neither legal nor smart to borrow money to pay for current expenses like salaries; it can be smart to use borrowed money to pay for the acquisition and construction of new facilities which is what over three-quarters is used for.

Student Activity Fund:  This revenue is from football game ticket sales, band turkey sales, FFA sausage sales, elementary school cookie dough sales, etc.  You fellows really want to go there?

Endowment, Agency & Trust Funds:  I managed two of these for my district, one we used to segregate significant gifts to the district so we could more easily show donors we were carrying out their wishes, the other was an accounting pass-through managing a workers compensation settlement made years before.  Sorry fellows, this 0.5% has nothing for you.

Their silo talk is silly and has always been, either by design or ignorance, a distraction from the core issues of whether Oklahoma schools have adequate resources and whether they are effectively using the resources they have.  What I’d like to know from the good fellows at OCPA is where they stand on the referendum veto effort led by Dr. No.  Was their support for raising revenue to finance teacher pay raises sincere, or are they now rooting for revenue failures to “starve the beast” and gleefully watch implementation of the required teacher pay increase by school districts that will have to dig way deep into their fund balance (the Bad in The Glib, The Bad and The Ugly  ) and reduce support employee staffing (the Ugly in The Glib, The Bad and The Ugly  ), both serious proposals made repeatedly by the OCPA in the run up to the 2018 legislative session.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “logic” behind the silo complaint alleged by the OCPA has been that there’s plenty of money for teacher raises if only districts could look beyond their General fund where most teachers’ compensation is funded to all the other silos that have money being wasted on frills and unnecessary stuff.  So what’s in each those mysterious silos that befuddle the good fellows?

Co-op Fund:  This is primarily for instructional and student support programs that school districts manage together in the interest of efficiency.  Expenditures are simply an extension of the districts’ general funds and reported separately because multiple districts are mixed together.

Building Fund:  Already 90% same as the general fund, may soon be 100%.

Child Nutrition Fund:  This is primarily federal funds AND families’ payments with some state matching mixed in—all earmarked to feed students, not to pay teachers.  You could take away the accounting silo (it has its own function coding) but not one more dime would be made available for teacher salaries.

MAPS  & Municipal Funds:  Very few districts receive this local money about which I know little and at 0.1% not enough to fill a grain sack much less a silo.

Bond & Sinking Funds:  Here’s the there, there, where Texas envy meets Silos.  If you read an OCPA rant that shows amounts way greater than the $681 million reported, being 11.2% of total new revenue that year then they’re double counting again (double) and don’t merit your attention.  Bond funds are borrowed money approved by local voters in each district; the Sinking fund is property taxes used to pay the loans back.  It is presently neither legal nor smart to borrow money to pay for current expenses like salaries; it can be smart to use borrowed money to pay for the acquisition and construction of new facilities which is what over three-quarters is used for.

Student Activity Fund:  This revenue is from football game ticket sales, band turkey sales, FFA sausage sales, elementary school cookie dough sales, etc.  You fellows really want to go there?

Endowment, Agency & Trust Funds:  I managed two of these for my district, one we used to segregate significant gifts to the district so we could more easily show donors we were carrying out their wishes, the other was an accounting pass-through managing a workers compensation settlement made years before.  Sorry fellows, this 0.5% has nothing for you.

Their silo talk is silly and has always been, either by design or ignorance, a distraction from the core issues of whether Oklahoma schools have adequate resources and whether they are effectively using the resources they have.  What I’d like to know from the good fellows at OCPA is where they stand on the referendum veto effort led by Dr. No.  Was their support for raising revenue to finance teacher pay raises sincere, or are they now rooting for revenue failures to “starve the beast” and gleefully watch implementation of the required teacher pay increase by school districts that will have to dig way deep into their fund balance (the Bad in   ) and reduce support employee staffing (the Ugly in    ), both serious proposals made repeatedly by the OCPA in the run up to the 2018 legislative session.

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.

 

 

 

 

 

Artist Cha’ Tullis hilltop sculpture of Indians on horseback Hominy, OK; be sure to visit his gallery in town.

This Thinker just finished reading “A Higher Loyalty:  Truth, Lies and Leadership” so a part where James Comey shares some regrets from his college days came to mind as I decided on a sophomoric title for this post, namely that after writing previously about the “Texas Envy” rampant among the fellows at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, I needed to more carefully examine the OCPA’s tool, “Data Tool” that is.  Go to their website homepage, select “Projects” at the top, then “Data Tools”, and lastly “Oklahoma Education Spending and Revenue”.  It used to be prominently displayed, but now is more hidden, so you can miss it and I’ll next explain why you should.  Also, if you bear with me to the very end, we’ll find what I think is the source of Frank Keating’s $300 million distortion when he wrote “In fact, through fiscal year 2016, Oklahoma public schools received more than $9.2 billion in revenue, a near record high.”  ( Takes One To Know One  and  Wayne’s World )

The “tool” purports to provide data about “Education spending, student enrollment, and spending per student from 2005-2006 to 2016-2017”.  I’ll use the “Note” following to organize my analysis.

OCPA says:  Data for this application are compiled from the Oklahoma Cost Accounting System (OCAS) and provided by the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE). 

My comment:  I am intimately familiar with the OCAS used by school districts for financial reporting to the State Department of Education.  It is the best source for financial data, though it can be easily misunderstood as it often is by the OCPA.  Here is a table that intersperses expenditure and revenue statewide totals from the OCAS site and the OCPA’s “data tool”.

You will note that for no year, neither revenue nor expenditures, does the OCPA “data tool” report the correct number from the OCAS data.  “Compiled” is the key word here.  They couldn’t just provide a more user friendly access to OCAS data, rather they had to “compile” it to fit their narrative about how Oklahoma schools have lots of money to spend.

Some of the differences we’ll try to understand later, but for now look at the “ocpa revenue” column compared with the “ocas revenue” three columns to the right; the numbers differ greatly.  Part of the explanation is that the OCPA ignores the obvious, that “nonrevenue” is not part of total revenue, and adds it in anyhow.  I have written about this many times (see  Double, Double, Toil and Trouble  ) so won’t elaborate except to point out that borrowed money, i.e. a district selling bonds to finance construction of a new school, is not income, rather it is an advance of income, local property taxes, to be levied later to retire the debt.  There is no reason to include the “nonrevenue” totals as part of total revenue except ignorance or deception—if the shoe fits…

OCPA says:  Visitors to the OSDE website will notice a sharp drop in expenditures after the 2015-2016 school year. This is due largely to HB 1202, which codifies NCES current spending as the official definition of per-pupil spending. 

My comment:  I noticed this change in the “State Reports” and commented on it in my post  The Bice Is Not Right earlier this year.   Here’s the SDE page we’re talking about.

Here is the 2016-2017 Expenditure Report  I assumed it was an error in uploading the data and would eventually be corrected.  Simply stated no Function 4000 or 5000 amounts are reported for FY 2017, but they are for all the prior listed years.  I see nothing in the legislation that requires this omission.  It only requires that “per pupil spending” be reported using “current expenditures” which means, of course, eliminate double counting by exclusion of Function 5000, and include no “capital” expenditures being Function 4000.  But defining the per pupil spending calculation that way doesn’t require not reporting those excluded transactions.  Anyhow my 2017 “ocas expend” amount is way low for that reason—OCAS simply does not report those functions for 2017 on the state reports.   However, check this out.

SDE does report the data both ways for each individual district, namely “District Expenditures Report per HB 1202” which omits functions 4000 and 5000, and “District Expenditure Report” which includes them.  I expect that eventually SDE will add a report to its State totals that will again include those functions. 

OCPA says:   However, in order to maintain transparency and year-to-year consistency, this application will continue to report nearly all spending. 

My Comment:  I assume the OCPA must have called SDE and obtained the missing data so their “tool” remains consistent. 

OCPA says:   (One notable exception: hundreds of millions of dollars in annual state contributions to the Oklahoma Teacher Retirement System. This money bypasses the school districts’ payroll and is sent directly to TRS.) 

My Comment:  There are two payments to OTRS that bypass school district payrolls.  One is budgeted for by the State Board of Education, $27.7 million in FY 2018, which pays a percentage of all teachers’ required 7% contribution, according to a years of service scale that was part of a compensation package many years ago.  It requires effort to continue, ought to be eliminated with some appropriate offset, but is truly part of current payroll costs.  So that statewide amount does escape notice in most calculations.  If the OCPA fellows are referring to this, they are correct, sort of.

The other payment is from the State itself, a dedicated 5% of four major revenue sources being sales, use, corporate income and individual income taxes.  In FY 2017 that amounted to $278.9 million—a very large sum.  You can see in this excerpt from the FY2017 OTRS Actuarial Report where it fits in; note the $27.7 million “state credit” is referenced as part of “Member contributions”.

In the lead up to the 2017 legislative session I wrote a couple of posts (see What’s Up Doc? or Should Teachers Eat A Carrot?  ) explaining how all this fits together so I’m not going to repeat it here.  Bottom line is that for FY 2017 out of the essentially $1 billion ($998 million) in “Contributions”, only $450 million of that was needed to support the retirement commitment to teachers and other school employees currently employed; their contributions paid for $293 million of that with the balance of $157 million coming from the employers and/or grant program contributions.  That means that ALL of the State’s direct contribution, the $278.9 million, and $271.1 million of employers contributions went to pay for the State’s unfunded future obligation to current retirees, like me.

So if we want to be accurate here in determining what it costs to fund Oklahoma’s public schools, then we should include the $27.7 million from the SBE budget paid in to OTRS; but we should not include the “hundreds of millions” the OCPA refers to AND we should subtract about $270 million from payroll costs, BECAUSE if the State didn’t spend another dime educating its children going forward, it would still bear the legal obligation of its past retirement promises costing the $550 million per year for an estimated 17 additional years. 

OCPA says:   All spending and revenue graphs and tables on this application are adjusted for inflation using the CPI Inflation Calculator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

My Comment:  In other words the numbers in their “tool” are “compiled”, i.e. distorted, by being multiplied by an inflation factor.  They don’t disclose the base year.  They don’t disclose how often they engage in this silly exercise.  They don’t examine whether the CPI is even a relevant measure of inflation for school district expenses.  This silliness makes their tool of no use except to intentionally distort what public education receives in revenue and expends each year—and their intent, as shown by their consistent double counting and other misrepresentations, is to inflate the actual numbers.

Look again at the table I compiled above.  The last two columns, “cpi rev” and “cpi exp” are the result of dividing “ocpa revenue” by “ocas rev+nonrev” and “ocpa expend” by “ocas expend” respectively.  The results should be the CPI inflation factor used to inflate each OCPA data entry from whatever mysterious base year they are using.  If their (and my transcription) math is correct then the two columns should be identical from 2006 through 2016; 2017 is distorted as discussed above.  Interestingly only five of the eleven years match and my hunch is the OCPA fellows simply botched the annual adjustments they make to this data.  Also, unless prices actually declined year over year, the numbers should rise from 2016 through 2006.   They do except between 2009 and 2008, the Great Recession, so that deflation makes sense.

One of the few external realities that made managing school district finances from 2006 to 2016 easy was the absence of inflation like that which rocked our economy in the 1970s.  When we went about the business of projecting expenditures and revenues general inflation measures were simply not relevant.  Student population growth mattered; legislative appropriations mattered; employee compensation changes, namely none, mattered; the closing of a major manufacturing facility mattered; but not once did I think to see what the CPI index was up to—it just didn’t matter.  Using it to distort the real numbers does nothing helpful to assist policy makers.

Here’s what it does do.  It provides some plausible justification for Frank Keating to write that school district revenues in 2016 were “more than $9.2 billion” when in fact, even using the OCPA’s double over counting, they were $8.812 billion (my table, ocas rev+nonrev).  But, you say, the ocpa revenue number for that year is only $8.964 billion.  Here’s what I think Frank did.  He was writing in February, 2018 so when he asked for the 2016 revenue amount, which is the OCAS number $8,812,222,077, the clever fellows at the OCPA couldn’t resist inflating it by the CPI.  Here’s the CPI Inflation Calculator for January 2016 to January 2018.

Multiply that real OCAS number (includes double counting) by 1.04622 and, drum roll please, we get $9,219,522,981—or, “more than $9.2 billion”.   I think Frank’s distortion is solved, and it was simply an indefensible distraction from what was a very serious statewide discussion about the future of our public education system.

What is really sad here is that the OCPA has invested some resources in having the OCAS data in an online program that could provide some useful and interesting features for policy makers.  But it is of no practical use because the numbers are distorted for no reason other than to exaggerate the investment Oklahomans make in public education.

Fantasy Epilogue:  An OCPA fellow goes into his year-end 2018 performance review with Frank as chair of the personnel committee armed with the latest CPI Inflation multiplier being 1.03 (3% inflation).  The fellow, whose salary is $100,000, states that his salary should be increased to $103,000.  Frank responds, “Well that’s perfect because I see here that, according to our “OCPA Salary Data Tool”, that adjustment has already been made!  Thank you for your service.”

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location, a blown up version of the last one.  It’s just too good to go unclaimed.

 

Artist Cha’ Tullis hilltop sculpture of Indians on horseback Hominy, OK; be sure to visit his gallery in town.             (This post also published at www.nondoc.com )

With a flourish Dr. No, the retired Senator Tom Coburn, reappeared on the state’s public stage in late March to express his outrage that the Oklahoma Legislature might have the gall to actually fund a teacher pay raise, the first in ten years, by overcoming the absurd 75% threshold required.   I critiqued his critique in Dr. No’s Holiday (Home)?  and then watched our legislature actually put its money where its mouth is.  For almost two years I’ve been reviewing and critiquing the pitiable arguments put forth by fellows at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) that on the one hand proclaimed support for raising teacher compensation, but on the other hand provided no real source of funding to pay for it ( The Glib, The Bad and The Ugly ).  Some legislators ( Chuck Has His Cake and Eats It Too ) kept the OCPA faith to the bitter end.  Now that the miracle on NE 23^rd Street is a reality the OCPA fellows are on to other matters, but Dr. No’s think-a-likes have formed Oklahoma Taxpayers Unite! to attempt repeal the new funding approved by the legislature.

After the legislature approved the tax increases OTU announced they would soon file their petition for repeal AND would demonstrate where several hundred million dollars could be found to pay for the teacher pay raise.  Their Facebook page has a post:

STATEMENT:  Oklahoma Taxpayers Unite! is NOT, I repeat, NOT working to take away teacher’s pay raises. We support teachers and education. We believe the citizens of the great state of Oklahoma should have the opportunity to vote either in favor of or against the huge tax increases passed by the state legislature.

Nowhere have I found their “plan” showing where the money will come from.  I have heard their statements about requiring performance audits of all state agencies, or something like that, and their vague assertion that requiring school districts to expend a certain percentage on instruction ( How Do I Leap The (60% that is)? Let Me Count The Ways ), but no specifics.  I doubt we’ll see anything out of them any more realistic than were the OCPA’s proposals mostly dismissed by the legislature.  Also we can expect Dr. No to make periodic appearances spouting the same “truths”, i.e. he loves teachers but there’s plenty of money for education in Oklahoma if we just cut out all the waste.  This from an Oklahoman whose work career has been in the private practice of medicine and the Congress where national health care policy is written.

When I contemplate Dr. No leading the charge to undo what a courageous legislature has done to advance public education in Oklahoma, I think it is fair to ask how our health care system in Oklahoma has fared during his tenure.  My thoughts about this ( A Spoonful of Sugar  Dennis Not The Menace  Not An Old Geezer Yet   and  Looking for Mr. James ) are succinctly summarized by this quote from my friend Carlton James, “Note the following facts:

1.  The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not have universal healthcare.
2. As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, the U.S. spends about 13 percent on healthcare; the next nine countries average less than 9 percent. Annually the U.S. spends $4,600 per person on healthcare. The next nine countries average $2,200.
3. Life expectancy in the U.S. is the lowest of the G-7 industrialized nations.
4. Universal healthcare is not an issue in the other industrialized countries.”

These stark facts came to mind upon seeing the recent Oklahoman article “Oklahoma Women Can Expect Shorter, Sicklier Lives Than Their Mothers, New Study Shows” published also in the Tulsa World April 29, 2018 ( Oklahoma Life Expectancy ).  An important measure of successful health care is life expectancy, a statistic that is measured with accuracy.  This shocking article, questioning the belief most of us Geezers hold that, as it has been for us, life will be better for the next generation, shows that despite amazing advances in medical technology and science and talented providers, our health care system is failing us in Oklahoma.

That article was followed by Paul Samuelson’s Op Ed in the Tulsa World May 3, 2018 ( Samuelson on Health Care Costs ) wherein he concludes, as have others ( Bitter Pill How Medical Bills Are Killing Us ) that we simply pay health care providers way too much, including doctors like Dr. No was/is.  Samuelson cites the studies that have convinced him that we should move our health care system toward universal Medicare pricing.  I can add to his proof, borrowing from the OCPA playbook (they endlessly cite Catoosa’s costly stadium press box to prove Oklahoma’s schools are adequately funded), by citing a recent story ( How A Urine Test After Back Surgery Triggered A $17,800 Bill ) on National Public Radio about a $100 urine test for which a woman was billed $17,800 and actually paid $5,000.

So Dr. No, who has every right as the citizen he is, holds forth now as an expert on how to finance public education in Oklahoma by giving teachers raises without raising taxes.  I think he should re-read Matthew 7:1-5,

7 “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. ² For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. ³ Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s^[a] eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? ⁴ Or how can you say to your neighbor,^[b] ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s^[c] eye.

Or, as Luke 4:23 more simply puts it, “Physician, heal thyself.”

As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.