Oklahoma agencies present budget requests amid projected shortfall

This week, representatives from 73 different state agencies presented their budget requests for the upcoming year.

“We did that on Tuesday and Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., and in many cases, sessions went well past 5 o’clock,” said Sen. Chuck Hall, chairman of appropriations for the Oklahoma State Senate.

In the face of a projected budget shortfall, the Oklahoma Tax Commission gave a presentation on how the state is funded. Hall says the key focus of the presentations was transparency.

“My goal and my focus, not only just for me, but for the members of the State Senate, is to bring it down into a way that we can all understand,” Hall said.

The Oklahoma Tax Commission provided a detailed presentation on how the state funds its government operations, revealing that over 90% of state funding comes from tax dollars.

“I think that we’re set up here for this specific duty to be fiscally responsible on how we spend and allocate the dollars,” he said.

However, Sen. Hall pointed out that recent revenue projections, as of December, indicate a shortfall of more than $100 million for the coming year.

“That potentially can create a problem we have to balance that,” Hall said. “We’re a balanced budget state, that number has to be balanced.”

During a legislative summit, Sen. Lonnie Paxton, President Pro Tempore revealed the projections could be even more dire, following the elimination of a 4.5% state tax on groceries. With Gov. Kevin Stitt calling for a state income tax cut, the budget could get further in the red.

“It looks like that number will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 million underwater,” said Sen. Paxton. “So, we have to go cut agencies to make up for that or we have to go pull from some type of state savings to make that number up.”

Sen. Paxton says the state does have $4 billion in savings and theoretically could use that money to balance the budget. However, Paxton and Hall agree that wouldn’t be ideal.

“I’m not a fan of taking one-time dollars which we refer to as cash and using that to fund recurring expenses,” said Hall.

The final certified budget numbers are expected to be released by the Board on Feb. 14.