Senate Democratic Leader Sean Burrage issues comments on release of budget deal for FY 2014

Senate Democratic Leader Sean Burrage issued the following comments in response to the release of the Republican’s budget deal for Fiscal Year 2014.

“Once again, we are asking our hard working school teachers and administrators to do more with less. While the Republicans who put this deal together will tout the ‘increased funding’ to education in this budget over last year, education is still getting $200 million less than they did in 2008. In the meantime, we have asked our schools to implement rigorous reforms aimed at improving the educational outcomes of Oklahoma’s children. But how can we expect our teachers, staff and administrators to be successful in these efforts when we refuse to give them the funds needed to accomplish what we are asking of them?

“In addition, we’re already seeing the impact of recent ‘reforms’ reflected in this budget. Just last week, we passed a workers’ compensation bill that was supposed to save us money and increase efficiencies in our workers’ compensation system. But, this ‘reform’ is already costing us an additional $1.5 million for the Workers’ Compensation Commission in this budget – an increase of more than 35 percent over FY 2013. At this rate we’re going to go broke saving money.

“Finally, we just passed a tax cut that will save the average hard-working Oklahoman less than 25 cents a day. But, when you add all those quarters up, it means $233 million that could be used to restore the funding cuts to our local schools, reduce class sizes, ensure our rural schools don’t get shuttered and consolidated, or give our teachers, state employees or our Highway Patrol a well-deserved raise.”