Quality Jobs payments totaled $61.7 million in FY 2011, according to Tax Commission
The Legislature’s Task Force on Tax Credits and Economic Incentives is holding another session today. This morning, it studied the Investment/New Jobs tax credit. This afternoon, it’s Quality Jobs. Here’s some updated Quality Jobs totals through the 2011 fiscal year, via the Oklahoma Tax Commission: Also, I pulled the company totals from FY 2007 [...]
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Oklahoma state agencies have high turnover after some new elected officials take over
BY PAUL MONIES Database Editor pmonies(at)opubco.com Scores of state employees have left agencies after new leaders took office earlier this year, saving the state some money but at the cost of experience and knowledge in many specialized jobs. Leading the way is the state Education Department, which has seen 61 employees leave since state schools [...]
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Should life without parole still be a sentence for multiple drug convictions?
From today’s story, which is generating a few comments online. I’ve also posted a few related letters to Gov. Mary Fallin at the bottom. One is from the District Attorneys Council. The other is from The Sentencing Project. BY PAUL MONIES Database Editor pmonies(at)opubco.com Published: August 18, 2011 The Pardon and Parole Board recommended [...]
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Redistricting: Oklahoma City releases proposed ward map, sets public meeting
The proposed ward map for the City of Oklahoma City was released on Tuesday. In the map below (click for a larger version), the current wards are in color, while the proposed boundaries are outlined in the brownish-black dotted lines. A lot of the population growth has come in the far northwest part of the [...]
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Visualizing $1 trillion
Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Muskogee, is getting a lot of attention today with his plan to cut $9 trillion in federal spending in the next decade. My colleague Chris Casteel had an update this afternoon. Here’s a look at just how much money just $1 trillion actually is, courtesy of the venture capital firm KPCB. [...]
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Correcting the legislative record on the public employee DOB case
First off, let’s get some disclosures out of the way: My birth date is 6/27/75. I’m a board member for FOI Oklahoma Inc. I signed several sworn affidavits in the court case pursued by The Oklahoman and other media outlets on gaining access to the birth dates and employee ID numbers of state employees for [...]
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Oklahoma Supreme Court rules state employee birth dates, employee ID numbers should be confidential
In a case that stretched almost 18 months, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled today in favor of several state employee groups on the birth date issue. For background stories by The Oklahoman, check our continuing coverage page. Also, I blogged about this issue at the end of last year. We’ll have more on this, but [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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.)
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