Dank, R-Oklahoma City, raised a ruckus last week about efforts by some of his colleagues to get last-minute tax credits and incentives approved. Dank has fought long and hard to eliminate tax credits that don’t provide a benefit to the state.

Among the last-minute proposals he cited was a sales tax exemption for an upcoming Senior PGA tournament in Edmond and a five-year extension for a wind-energy tax credit that is supposed to sunset in 2016.

The House voted this session for a bill by Dank to set mandatory criteria for all tax credits. “Did they mean it when they voted for those criteria a few weeks ago, or was that all just a scam to fool the taxpayers?” he said.

We’ll find out as the session winds to a close.

President Barack Obama claims he’s for “balanced” deficit reduction that relies on the rich paying just a little more. It turns out Obama defines “rich” to include those earning less than $10,000 annually, based on an analysis of his latest budget proposal by the Tax Policy Center.

The center found Americans at all income levels would face 2015 tax increases under Obama’s plan — which, we must point out, still fails to balance the budget even with $1.1 trillion in tax increases over a decade.

Obama’s plan includes a tobacco tax increase, which would fall disproportionately on the poor. While those earning between $50,000 and $200,000 would see after-tax income decline one-tenth of 1 percent, the center estimates those earning less than $50,000 would see after-tax income decline by two and three times that amount.

Who knew Obama considered a welfare recipient with a cigarette the equivalent of John Rockefeller?

Although his colleagues insist he’s an intelligent legislator, House Democratic Leader Scott Inman’s typical method of operation is to act deliberately dense.

This week Inman, D-Del City, noted Gov. Mary Fallin’s proposed tax cut would reduce annual state revenue by more than $100 million and that only an additional $170 million is available this budget year. When you throw in the spending increases endorsed by the governor, Inman insisted, “We simply don’t see how the math adds up.”

Here’s how: The tax cut affects only half the fiscal — not calendar — year, reducing revenue by $40.7 million for the budget year and leaving $129 million for increases.

House Democrats could make a serious argument against Fallin’s tax cut. Instead, Inman pretends he doesn’t know the difference between the calendar and fiscal years. House Democrats want to regain legislative clout. They won’t get it the way Inman is going about it.

Look at what happened following the Connecticut schoolhouse shooting last week. President Barack Obama announced his administration would be exploring changes in gun policy, and now firearms are flying off store shelves. Consumers want to buy now instead of waiting to see how access to some weapons might change.

Every year, consumers hold off on buying a new TV or school clothing and supplies, and instead wait for Black Friday or the August sales tax holiday. Raising taxes on tobacco drives down use; conversely, smokers have streamed to tribal smokeshops that due to tax policy enjoy a price advantage over nontribal retailers. Pending new year’s increases in the capital gains tax have prompted business owners across the country to try to sell their companies.

The federal wind production tax credit, which will expire Dec. 31 unless Congress acts, has the attention of developers. According to U.S. Energy Information Administration, “It appears that wind developers are pushing to complete projects in 2012 to qualify for the PTC.”

The threat of a stiff penalty for text-messaging while driving might deter this dangerous practice. Oklahoma lawmakers in 2013 should consider that before, as they’ve done in the past, simply rejecting the idea.

Sales tax collections for the month were 8.4 percent higher than the prior year; motor vehicles tax collections were 2.2 percent higher. Both figures are signs of continuing consumer confidence in Oklahoma. On the downside, low energy prices made gross production taxes nonexistent and individual income tax collections were down 5.4 percent.

Secretary of Finance Preston Doerflinger noted total collections for the fiscal year to date are $33 million above the estimate. Still, he warned that if the federal government goes over the “fiscal cliff,” it could have dramatic impact on the state economy.

The governor’s office is drafting a state budget responsibly prepared for federal cuts of $137 million to $200 million. Oklahoma’s economy is faring well, but warning signs are on the horizon, and haphazard federal fiscal policy could easily plunge us back into recession. Stay tuned.

The head of a committee formed to plan the adult-juvenile complex says the vote could be held as early as March. The price tag is roughly $350 million.

County Commissioner Ray Vaughn says if the plan is approved, officials would look for enough land to build a sprawling one-story complex. The current jail, opened in 1991, stands 13 stories and was the subject of a harsh critique by the U.S. Justice Department five years ago. Most of the problems outlined in that report have been addressed, but Sheriff John Whetsel says some deficiencies can only be fixed with a major remodeling or a new jail.

The present jail is a problem, has been for a long time. A March election doesn’t allow much time to convince the public to pay for a new one, but then, there’s probably no perfect time to make such a request.

OCPA President Michael Carnuccio issued a statement Thursday seeking to make that point clear. One day earlier Tina Dzurisin, a policy impact director for the think tank, had said the OCPA would focus more of its time on other areas such as workers’ compensation reform and pension reform as opposed to “expending so much energy on a proposal that the Legislature didn’t feel like they were quite ready to put through.”

The OCPA has promoted a plan, backed by former Reagan economic adviser Arthur Laffer, to immediately cut Oklahoma’s top personal income tax rate by 3 percentage points, to 2.25 percent, and eventually phase it out entirely.

Carnuccio says his group is working to conduct new research with Laffer, to be released soon, and will “continue to build the case for Oklahoma becoming the next no-income tax state.”

The question will be whether lawmakers will pursue it. There was considerable chatter ahead of the 2012 session about cutting taxes, but that doesn’t seem to be the case presently. Gov. Mary Fallin sought to cut the top rate to 3.5 percent and simplify the tax code, but her plan and others wound up being tabled.

The measures range from a sales tax hike in Arizona to income tax increases in California. At least those ballot measures are transparent about who will pay the price. Oklahoma’s SQ 744 provided no such details. The proposed massive infusion of money would have been the largest unfunded mandate in Oklahoma history.

Sadly, those pushing for higher education funding in Oklahoma — such as the group “49th is Not OK” — continue to duck that issue. They refuse to say what taxes they’d raise or what programs they’d cut to boost K-12 funding, which already gets 34 percent of all state appropriations.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to … write about state revenue.

So we won’t let ourselves get off Walter Scott-free for an editorial in The Oklahoman this week that discussed a big drop in gross production tax revenue during August and the need for the administration to get busy building more liquefied natural gas export facilities.

We noted that gross production taxes totaled just $154,000, compared with $36.1 million in August 2011. That prompted one reader to call and point out that his energy company alone wrote a tax check larger than $154,000 last month.

We should have spelled out, as the state finance director did in the report we used as the basis of the editorial, that natural gas generated about $14 million in gross production tax revenue, but most of that was eaten up by “refunds and other required distributions.”

August was a down month for the state’s energy sector, yes. But cataclysmic? No.

Previously, the state of Washington owned liquor stores; nongovernmental sellers could only provide wine or beer. State voters recently approved a measure to privatize the industry. The number of retail outlets surged from 328 to more than 1,500.

You would expect that to lower costs to consumers, but liquor prices rose 17 percent. The reason for the increase wasn’t a bizarre side effect of greater competition, but significant taxes of 10 percent and 17 percent imposed on distributors and retailers, respectively.

Just as excessive regulation can reduce competition and drive up prices, excessive taxes can undermine the benefits of competition and punish consumers.

Public confidence in government relies on transparency. When local governments repeatedly refuse to have their books audited, that’s cause for concern. Furthermore, most of the communities impacted are small towns where every dollar counts, so forfeiting fuel tax money has real impact.

Unfortunately, for many small communities the cost of the audit is greater than the cost of the financial penalty, so those towns are opting to take the hit rather than have their books examined.

We’re glad 87 percent of towns in Oklahoma are filing their audits, but wish the other 13 percent would join them. The challenges facing small towns are real, but balancing the budget by avoiding audits is poor public policy.

Maybe they’ll do better than Kentucky lawmakers. Stateline.org notes that tax reform has been an issue there for a decade with little to show for it.

As in Oklahoma, closing tax breaks is in the mix in Kentucky, including generous exemptions for pension income and sales tax exemptions for accounting, legal services, dry cleaning, limousine rides, landscaping and country club memberships.

Kentucky Democrats want to increase the income tax on the wealthy, while some Republicans want to eliminate it. In both states, beneficiaries of current policies have fought hard against change.

Unlike Kentucky, however, Oklahoma Republicans can’t blame the failure of tax reform on divided government — they run the whole show here.

Marion Barry (AP File Photo)

How much of a mess is the city council in Washington, D.C.? Even Marion Barry says it’s ridiculous. “We are the laughingstock of the nation,” Barry said at Wednesday’s meeting. In the past five months, two council members have resigned and pleaded guilty to crimes — one for stealing city money targeted for a youth program, the other for bank fraud. Meantime, federal investigators have been looking into city corruption. Barry is the District’s former mayor. While in that job, he was caught on film smoking crack cocaine and was convicted of marijuana possession. More recently he was prosecuted for not filing his taxes eight times in nine years. Councilman David Catania alluded to all that in responding to Barry’s laughingstock comment. “The worst perpetrators are sitting on this dais,” Catania said, noting that a “member of the (Finance and Revenue) Committee is a convicted criminal, hasn’t paid his taxes and yet he’s allowed to lecture others on ethics and vote on tax policy.” Zing!

Photo by Paul B. Southerland, The Oklahoman Archives

Photo by Paul B. Southerland, The Oklahoman

Left: Tulip at Will Rogers Park (The  Oklahoman Archives)

President Barack Obama speaks about energy at the TransCanada Pipe Yard near Cushing, Okla., Thursday, March 22, 2012. Photo by Nate Billings, The Oklahoman

President Obama used his recent trip to the Cushing area to tout an executive order fast-tracking the southern leg of the Keystone pipeline. He should have saved taxpayers the money. Critics pointed out that federal help wasn’t needed to move the project forward. National Journal’s energy and environmental experts agree. In a survey, 71 percent said this week that the executive order was unnecessary, and most concurred that the pipeline from Cushing to the Gulf Coast needs only local approval. The president’s involvement is “not even remotely necessary,” one insider said. Another said it “looks like federal government interfering in the traditionally local decision of land-use planning, and it likely won’t actually change the permitting process, which is already under way. Not great optics — and I say this as a fan of the president.”