Census 2010: Oklahoma Profile Map
The Census Bureau has released a new set of state maps that detail some of the recent data from the 2010 Census.
Here’s Oklahoma (click for larger version):
For a PDF of the same map, click here.
You can see other states here.
Written by Paul Monies
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Some Oklahoma ex-officials making six-figure pensions
Re-posting Sunday’s story:
BY PAUL MONIES
Database Editor
pmonies(at)opubco.com
More than 60 state retirees, including former statewide elected officials, district attorneys and judges, are receiving annual pensions of more than $100,000.
In many cases, those annual pensions exceed the retiree’s highest annual salary and dwarf the amount the retiree contributed during his or her years of public service.
The pension information is online at AccountAbilityOK.com, a new website developed by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. The organization advocates for limited government and has called on lawmakers to convert the state pension systems to defined-contribution plans more like those in the private sector.
For several years, former State Auditor and Inspector Clifton Scott was the poster child for the state’s highest pension. But Scott, with an annual pension of about $157,000, has been supplanted by two former district attorneys, records show.
Tom Giulioli, who retired last year as the district attorney for Okmulgee and McIntosh counties, has an annual pension of more than $176,700. Cathy Stocker, who served as district attorney for 28 years in a five-county area from Enid to El Reno, has an annual pension of more than $162,000.
Both Giulioli and Stocker each earned an annual salary of almost $122,000 in their final years on the job, according to state payroll data.
Neither Giulioli nor Stocker could be reached for comment.
Changes in state pension laws and rules will stop future retirees from receiving annual pensions higher than their salaries. But thousands of current and future retirees are still “grandfathered” from the changes, which apply mostly to new state employees.
Among recent high-profile retirees with six-figure pensions are:
Former Attorney General Drew Edmondson, whose annual pension is almost $150,000 after 33 years of service.
Former state schools Superintendent Sandy Garrett, who spent 44 years in state government. Her annual pension is $123,600.
Data collection
Under the state’s Open Records Act, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs collected individual pension benefit data from three of the state’s six major pension systems. The data on the AccountAbilityOK.com website covers more than 75,000 retirees or their beneficiaries.
Three public safety pension systems — firefighters, police and law enforcement — declined to provide the same information as the pension systems for teachers, state employees and judges, said Jonathan Small, fiscal policy director for the group.
Small said the public safety pension systems all cited confidentiality for not releasing individual beneficiary data. He called on lawmakers to open the beneficiary information for the public safety pension systems.
“Citizens, who in the end are responsible for paying all the promises of these pension systems, deserve to know the details and results of financial obligations for which they are on the hook,” Small said.
Tom Spencer, executive director of the Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System, said lawmakers opened basic information about the system’s beneficiaries in the wake of the Gene Stipe scandal.
Stipe, a former state senator from McAlester, pleaded guilty in 2003 to federal campaign finance violations. Stipe, who is 84 and suffers from dementia, continues to receive a state pension of more than $95,800 annually.
The public employees retirement system tried to forfeit Stipe’s pension after his guilty plea in 2003. Stipe’s attorneys fought the effort all the way to the Oklahoma Supreme Court and won in 2008.
“Former Sen. Cal Hobson ran a bill in 2004 to make not just elected officials pension amounts public, but all OPERS pension amounts public,” Spencer said. “Ever since then, all of that information is a matter of public record.”
Most receive less
The outliers in the “six-figure pension club” tend to overshadow the tens of thousands of other state retirees and their beneficiaries who receive annual pensions of much less, Spencer said.
“A handful of these people were really fortunate when the loophole existed and they’re making these pensions, but there’s just a handful of them,” Spencer said. “The average Joe Blow pension benefit is pretty modest. They’ve worked for many years at modest pay and they’re getting some pension benefits, but that’s it.”
The average pension at the Oklahoma Public Employee Retirement System is about $18,000 $15,200. It’s about $19,160 at the Teachers Retirement System. Retired judges, who make higher salaries, tend to have higher pensions. The average pension is more than $60,800 $60,100 at the Uniform Retirement System for Justices or Judges.
More than one-third of the retirees in the three pension systems that provided data are receiving annual pensions in excess of the entire amount they contributed as an employee.
Much of the recent focus on public retirement pensions has come as companies in the private sector continue to shed defined-benefit pension plans in favor of defined-contribution plans such as 401(k)s. Investment losses from the recession also sharpened the scrutiny by taxpayers and other groups throughout the country, said James Wilbanks, executive director of the Teachers Retirement System.
Legislative changes
Lawmakers made changes in the 2011 legislative session to address some of the shortfalls in the state pension systems. The biggest was forcing future cost-of-living adjustments to have a dedicated funding source. That alone will shave about $5 billion in unfunded liabilities from an estimated shortfall of $16.5 billion.
Other reforms increased the retirement age for new hires in the Teachers Retirement System to 65 from 62. Also, elected officials will be treated like other state employees. They no longer will be allowed to contribute at higher rates to receive higher pension benefits.
Rep. Randy McDaniel, R-Edmond, has requested several interim legislative studies on pension issues. McDaniel and Sen. Mike Mazzei, R-Tulsa, authored several of the pension bills that passed earlier this year.
“This is a long-term process,” said McDaniel, chairman of a new House oversight committee on pensions. “It took many decades to get in this financial condition. We made a significant difference last session; nonetheless, we still have much work to be done. We are still among the bottom in the states on our financial status.
State Treasurer Ken Miller, who is chairman of the Oklahoma State Pension Commission, said continuing the reforms will help put the pension systems on a firmer footing. As tax revenues rebound, Miller said he hopes legislators won’t succumb to pressure to grant cost-of-living adjustments just because extra money is available to spend.
Unlike other states where pension reforms have been met with hardened opposition, Miller said lawmakers, employee groups and pension officials have worked together to make necessary changes. More can be done, he said.
“We have a different workforce than we did when these pension systems were designed,” Miller said. “There’s some desire for plans that offer choice and flexibility that will meet employee needs and be fair to taxpayers.
Written by Paul Monies
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The case of the missing Oklahoma plutonium
You can file this as Exhibit A in how not to test your website.
I stumbled across this while searching for state contracting regulations at the Oklahoma Department of Central Service’s website. (Click the image for a larger version.)
Wow. The state’s buying depleted plutonium. Sounds like a great story, right?
Well, after clicking on the supplemental attachments list, I got a picture of some folks in party hats:
So, this clearly looked like a prank. But I made a call to the department just to check. It turns out they are testing a new bid solicitation system and have been training their employees for the last several weeks on how to use it.
Long story short: That plutonium bid solicitation was just a test and shouldn’t have been available on the public portion of the DCS website. It has since been pulled down.
I still think it would have been a great story.
–Paul
Written by Paul Monies
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Transparency: New Sunspot map highlights Oklahoma open records, open meetings complaints
Dr. Joey Senat, associate professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University, has compiled some recent violations of the state’s Open Meetings/Open Records Acts in Oklahoma. Read more at the FOI Oklahoma blog.
–Paul
(Full disclosure: I’m among the board members at FOI Oklahoma.)
Written by Paul Monies
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As tuition increases loom, some Oklahoma Higher Education funds flush with cash
Re-posting Sunday’s print story below.
- Check out the latest financial snapshots for college and university revolving funds
BY PAUL MONIES
Database Editor
pmonies(at)opubco.com
Some revolving funds for colleges and universities are flush with cash as higher education leaders warn of impending tuition increases from budget cuts.
The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center’s three revolving funds had a combined balance of $93.4 million at the end of March, according to a list of balances provided by the Office of State Finance. That’s up from $75.5 million at the end of December.
Meanwhile, the University of Central Oklahoma saw a 35 percent increase in its combined revolving funds in the first quarter. It went from $31 million in December to $41 million in March.
In March 2010, UCO’s revolving funds had a combined balance of $27 million, according the Office of State Finance.
Some higher education officials said their revolving funds are often targeted by state budget writers to make up shortfalls in other areas.
Steve Kreidler, UCO’s executive vice president, said part of its revolving fund increase came from tuition revenue from higher enrollment. The university’s enrollment grew by 1,000 students this year to more than 17,000.
“We would have collected a whole ton of tuition in January and February from students enrolling for the spring semester,” Kreidler said. “We then pay it out over the next several months because we still have salaries and overhead.”
At the other end of the scale, several colleges and universities had large drops in their revolving fund balances. Oklahoma State University’s revolving funds for its Stillwater campus fell to $6.5 million in March, down from $12.6 million in March 2010.
The state Regents for Higher Education also saw large decreases in its revolving fund balances. Its combined balance was $12.7 million in March, down from $22.2 million a year ago.
Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College saw its combined revolving fund balance drop to $1.62 million in March. That’s down from $7.38 million a year ago. Much of that decrease was from its capital expenditures fund.
Revolving funds are snapshot
Higher education budget officials said the revolving fund balances are a snapshot in time and may fluctuate during the year from tuition and fee revenue. Some of the balances are cash reserves, too.
In UCO’s case, Kreidler said the university’s governing board likes to keep about one-twelfth of its annual operating budget in reserves. That’s about $12 million, he said.
“We’ve been holding off on capital expenditures to make sure we had good reserve funds to go into next year,” Kreidler said. “But that meant we haven’t fixed up as many classrooms; we haven’t fixed sidewalks that needed to be fixed.”
Kreidler said some deans are also saving money from academic course fees over a period of several years to make classroom improvements without borrowing through the state.
“Some of the colleges are in very aggressive forms of setting money aside to be able to do that stuff for students, like building out labs,” Kreidler said.
OU Health Sciences Center
The increases in the OU Health Sciences Center balances came mostly from a $33 million repayment from the Office of State Finance, said Catherine F. Bishop, OU’s vice president of public affairs.
“In (fiscal year) 2010, the state borrowed funds from a number of agencies and schools to cover statewide cash-flow requirements,” Bishop said in an email. “ … Additionally, there were increases in cash receipts realized from tobacco tax, tuition and fees, and indirect cost (overhead) reimbursements between years.”
Jonathan Small, fiscal policy director for the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, said the size and growth of some higher education revolving funds deserves more scrutiny. He said higher education should be treated like any other state agency. That means removing some of its exemptions from legislative oversight.
“If necessary, the Legislature needs to send a measure to the vote of the people to amend the constitution to allow lawmakers to have the same appropriations oversight and direction as that of any other agency,” Small said.
Borrowing from other funds to make up shortfalls is just one of the tactics used by budget writers to balance the budget.
The $6.5 billion budget agreement for the 2012 fiscal year includes more than $93.7 million in transfers from various revolving funds. That includes $25 million from the unclaimed property fund and $5 million from a revolving fund at the Insurance Department.
Another $219 million to balance the budget came from leftover federal stimulus funds and cash reserves.
The remainder of the entire $500 million budget shortfall came from appropriations cuts. Higher education, which receives about 14 percent of the state’s appropriations, received total cuts of $58 million. That’s a 5.8 percent decrease from fiscal year 2011.
Separately, the Transportation Department saw an appropriations decrease of $8 million, or 7 percent, in exchange for additional authority to issue $70 million in bonds.
–Paul
Written by Paul Monies
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Try out our interactive before and after Oklahoma redistricting maps
UPDATE: We have taken down this page with the interactive before/after maps. I apologize for any inconvenience. (8/15/11).
We’re in the home stretch of redistricting in the state House and Senate. I had a story today about the major changes to Senate District 43 that straddles Oklahoma and Cleveland counties.
With the help of Web Editor Nick Tankersley, I came up with a series of sliding redistricting maps on NewsOK that include party voter registration.
(Click on the image to go to the page)
In these maps, purple precincts are competitive. Light blue leans Democratic and dark blue is heavily Democratic. Light red leans Republican, while dark red is heavily Republican. I computed these categories by comparing the percentage-point difference in Republican voter registration to Democratic voter registration in each precinct.
(Hat tip to Matt Stiles down at the Texas Tribune, where I got the idea to use the image sliders.)
–Paul
Written by Paul Monies
Follow @pmonies
New Oklahoma Senate redistricting map favors suburbs, most incumbents
New Oklahoma Senate redistricting plan. The colored shapes are the new districts. The old districts are outlined in dotted grey lines, while counties are labeled and outlined in pink. (Click to enlarge)
I’ve added some links to this slightly extended and updated version of Sunday’s story on Senate redistricting:
BY PAUL MONIES
Database Editor
pmonies(at)opubco.com
Some fast-growing suburbs of Oklahoma City and Tulsa won out in the latest legislative redistricting process that largely protected incumbents in the Senate.
The Senate approved its redistricting plan Friday by a vote of 38-6. (Update: The House passed it Monday afternoon by a vote of 67-30.)
For the first time, the Senate will have a district focused on the fast-growing Hispanic population. The Capitol Hill neighborhood on Oklahoma City’s south side will be part of Democratic Minority Leader Andrew Rice’s downtown district.
Redrawn boundary maps released in the closing weeks of the Legislature will have political implications in elections for the next decade, redistricting experts and lawmakers said.
“This is not a map that was drawn for the convenience of Democratic incumbent lawmakers, but there’s nothing illegal about that. This is politics,” said Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma. “You used to have a lot of senate districts come into the suburbs and pick up population and keep the rural lawmakers in place. The polarity has totally flipped now. All these districts are being pulled so deeply into the suburbs that suburban voters can dominate them.”
Republicans command majorities in the House and Senate, but differing approaches to the mapmaking in each chamber were evident last week as the plans were first considered.
At one point, Democrat Rep. Mike Shelton, D-Oklahoma City, jokingly suggested senators could find a mentor in the House to resolve problems with the Senate map.
“In the House, people sat down and worked it out,” said Democrat Sen. Tom Adelson of Tulsa. “In the Senate, the Republicans seemed like they wanted to jam the boot in your neck.”
Adelson and Sen. Tom Ivester of Elk City were among two Senate Democrats who saw their districts change drastically under the new Senate map. Several Democratic senators in the northeastern part of the state also saw major changes.
But the moving of incumbents wasn’t limited to Democrats. In all, three GOP senators no longer live in their districts: Sen. Jim Reynolds of Oklahoma City; Sen. David Myers of Ponca City; and Sen. Rob Johnson of Kingfisher.
Myers, who is term limited in 2014, said he has no complaints. His mostly rural district lost more than 9,800 residents in the last decade.
“There’s just no way you could maintain that many senators in my rural area,” Myers said. “Since I was term-limited, who do you think they picked on? But I’m not unhappy. It’s a good district and will give me a chance to see some new folks in the next few years.”
Reynolds takes office as Cleveland County treasurer in July, so a special election will have to be held in District 33 43 under its current boundaries. In 2012, the district will move south to McClain and Stephens counties.
Adelson’s District 33 shifted from a mostly downtown Tulsa area to one in the southern and southeastern GOP suburbs. His house was placed in Republican Sen. Brian Crain’s redrawn district.
Proposed Tulsa area Senate districts. (Click to enlarge)
Adelson, who considers Crain a friend, said he plans to run for reelection in Crain’s District 39.
“I think I could compete,” Adelson said. “Some of those precincts have good Democratic numbers.”
Ivester’s district flipped from the southwest to one stretching from western Oklahoma to Canadian County. It now includes Republican Sen. Rob Johnson’s house in Kingfisher. Johnson plans to move to his redrawn district, which now includes parts of Edmond.
Long odds for Democrats
Senate Democrats said they knew they faced long odds in getting districts redrawn to their liking. But Adelson said the hiring of a GOP political consultant poisoned the process. Karl Ahlgren was paid more than $127,000 for his redistricting advice to the Republican leadership since spring 2009, according to Senate financial records.
“Redistricting is political by nature, but at least people have had some modesty about it in the past,” Adelson said. “Their people were not interested in preserving the voice of Oklahomans, they were interested in increasing the Republican market share for personal benefit.”
Ahlgren’s firm, AH Strategies, ran the campaign of Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett, who defeated Adelson in the 2009 mayoral race.
Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, the chairman of the Senate Redistricting panel, said the process can be emotionally charged.
“This is probably the most personal thing we do in the senate,” Jolley said.
Ahlgren has had a succession of consulting contracts with the Oklahoma Senate under current and former Republican leaders. Ahlgren, a former assistant secretary of the senate, also worked for U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn and former U.S. Sen. Don Nickles.
“As such, his knowledge of Oklahoma and the local communities of interest was valuable to the process,” Jolley said. “Members of both political parties consulted with Mr. Ahlgren and any allegations that Mr. Ahlgren actually drew lines are simply false. Lines were drawn under the direction of senators directly to the technical staff.”
The Senate spent $165,500 on redistricting in the last three years, said Jarred Brejcha, spokesman for Senate President Pro Tempore Brian Bingman. That included Ahlgreen’s contracts, software and payroll for other employees.
In the House, former Republican Rep. Larry Ferguson served as an informal advisor to the redistricting process for “historical context” but was not paid, officials said. Including software, payroll and travel, the House spent $175,000 on redistricting since August 2010, said John Estus, spokesman for House Speaker Kris Steele.
Minority districts
Because any new map must comply with the federal Voting Rights Act to protect minority representation, that’s the first place mapmakers start, Jolley said.
“We had to draw those districts before we could do anything else, and we had to draw around those districts and that resulted in some funny looking maps in Oklahoma city and Tulsa,” he said. “That made the process more difficult but at then end of the day we’ve got maps that make sense that I believe the majority of members of both parties hopefully will support.”
Central Oklahoma area Senate districts under proposed plan. (Click to enlarge)
The Senate map largely preserves Oklahoma City Sen. Constance Johnson’s District 48, a seat long held by an African-American. Still, Johnson said Friday on the Senate floor she wasn’t happy with losing part of her district to fellow Democratic Sen. Charlie Laster of Shawnee. Johnson said she may explore filing a lawsuit over the Senate plan.
In Tulsa, Sen. Judy Eason McIntyre’s District 11 lost more than 11,000 people since 2000. To retain the majority-minority status of that district, additional Hispanic precincts were moved in. McIntyre does not plan to run for reelection.
Rice said creating a new Hispanic majority-minority district in Oklahoma City isn’t yet a requirement under federal law. But he said Senate redistricting leaders wanted to be ahead of the demographic changes on the city’s south side. Rice gave up several urban neighborhoods in his current District 46 to make that happen.
“It’s sad to lose them, but I’m excited to get new parts of downtown and the Capitol Hill neighborhood, which has such a rich history and is evolving in interesting ways,” Rice said.
Rice said his hope is that part of town could eventually be represented by a Hispanic senator.
Written by Paul Monies
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Oklahoma Redistricting: Interactive map of new Senate plan and download the data
I’ve uploaded a new interactive map of the Senate’s redistricting plan released this afternoon.
Also, here’s the data, courtesy of Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, and Senate Redistricting Staff.
On the map, zoom in to see if your house has moved into another senator’s district.
For a larger version of what’s below, click here. (For a non-Flash version, go here.)
If you see any errors or omissions, let me know.
–Paul
Written by Paul Monies
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Oklahoma Redistricting: Senate releases plan
The Oklahoma Senate released its new plan for redistricting this afternoon. You can read the press release here.
Senate redistricting leaders and staffers also released the shapefile data behind the plans. (I will post that later.)
Here’s some very quickly rendered maps of the new plan (red outlines) with the old lines layered below (black outlines).
What do you think of the plan? Drop me a comment below.
State map (click each map for a larger version)
Oklahoma City inset:
Tulsa inset:
–Paul
Written by Paul Monies
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Oklahoma budget agreement for FY 2012 visualized
Below is a what’s called a tree map showing the budget appropriations by agency under the agreement released yesterday. It was done using the free data visualization tool created by IBM called Many Eyes.
Basically, the tree map compares the whole amounts appropriated by agency from what it received in FY 2009 and what is proposed under the agreement for FY 2012. The intensity of orange shading shows an increase, while the intensity of blue shading shows a decrease. The size of each rectangle is proportional to its share of the overall budget appropriation.
For a larger version of the interactive, go here. (One note: You must enable Java on your browser.)
You can click on each rectangle to get a summary of each year’s amount and percent change. As you can see, pretty much every agency has suffered cuts over the last few years, with the exception of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, Commissioners of the Land Office and the state Election Board.
Thanks to the Oklahoma Policy Institute for help in compiling the numbers. You can view a PDF of their spreadsheet here.
–Paul
Written by Paul Monies
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