It’s neither a fable nor your imagination: Some of your statehouse’s elected leaders are threatening the goose that lays golden eggs.
In this real-life tale, the “goose” is the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust, the constitutional state agency whose mission is to help create a healthier Oklahoma by reducing tobacco use and obesity.
Established in a 2000 statewide vote, TSET has taken the state’s annual portion of a 25-year payout from tobacco companies and protected it – while still accomplishing its mission.
Other states in the settlement largely blew the windfall, but TSET now sits on a $2.2 billion fund that last year alone generated enough income to carry out both healthier-living initiatives and award $150 million in Legacy Grants.
Choosing from 167 applicants, TSET distributed 14 grants across the state aimed at bolstering research into cancer, cardiovascular disease and other smoking-related illnesses, as well as enhancing healthcare access and healthcare workforce development, and nutrition.
In other words, TSET is doing exactly what voters and taxpayers wanted.
Alas, TSET’s annual income – maybe even the endowment itself – is the stuff of an ambitious politician’s dream: A pot of gold waiting to be spent. No need to increase taxes or cut existing programs!
With a sluggish economy and a possible budget shortfall looming, it’s no surprise lawmakers are intensifying efforts to get their mitts on TSET’s largesse.
Last year, they passed a law that could have led to the replacement of any TSET board that refused to yield to pressure from elected leaders [see Stitt, Gov. Kevin]. Thankfully, the state Supreme Court declared that scheme unconstitutional.
This year, House Appropriations and Budget Chair Trey Caldwell, R-Faxon, wants to send voters a proposal that would alter TSET’s mission and eliminate its board of directors.
Though short on details, the idea is to change TSET’s focus from health to college-CareerTech scholarships: To use the $150 million income the endowment annually generates to expand Oklahoma’s Promise Scholarships to every student who meets the requirements – not just those from lower-income families. And it would allow TSET’s holdings to include “real property, stocks and other equity investments to be added to the trust, not just cash.”
The goal, Caldwell said, is to “fully fund every Oklahoma student who can academically qualify for Oklahoma’s Promise to go to college and CareerTech tuition-free, as well as students seeking apprenticeships.”
An admirable goal, indeed. But it overlooks an important fact: The Legislature already has the authority – and the money – to fund those scholarships without dismantling TSET and its health-centric mandate.
Remember, the state has between $2 billion and $5 billion in reserves depending on what’s being counted and how it can be spent. But even without tapping those funds, there’s enough wiggle room in a $13 billion budget to come up with the $150 million Caldwell seeks to fund Oklahoma’s Promise scholarships for all.
It’s all a matter of priorities.
And right now, the top priority for too many of statehouse leader’s is to eliminate the state’s largest single source of revenue – the income tax – because it would benefit the state’s deepest pockets. Yep, the folks who write big campaign checks.
Let’s face it: some legislators dream of climbing the political ladder. What could be more potent in building a financially viable statewide or congressional campaign than to claim responsibility for tax cuts that ostensibly ensured workaday Sooners get to “keep more of their hard-earned money”?
Of course, last year’s quarter percentage point tax cut saved most Oklahoma families about enough to buy a Big Mac each month. What it saved the state’s fattest cats, though, was serious coin.
The choice between TSET’s health mission and Oklahoma’s Promise isn’t either/or. It’s both/and.
