advertisements
News
Oklahoma
Posted: Apr 04, 2025 10:12 AMUpdated: Apr 04, 2025 10:13 AM
CAPITOL CALL Powered by Phillips 66 4-4-25
Tom Davis
State Senator Julie Daniels and State Representative John B. Kane discussed the state budget, efforts to lower the state income tax and bringing new businesses to Oklahoma on Friday's Capitol Call Powered by Phillips 66.
Senator John B. Kane said of the budget, "We're moving forward. We have a great relationship with our counterparts in the Senate. We meet every Tuesday and I feel like we're progressing really smoothly with that. The question will be will we get a budget?"
Kane and Daniels agreed that it will all come down to what the Governor wants and if the state legistalure will bring him something he'll sign.
Speaking to Senator Daniels, we brought up that Kansas is working their way down to no state income tax and so is Mississippi. When asked how close Oklahoma is to moving in that direction, she said the lawmakers have a number of ideas.
"Our caucus has started really thoroughly going through what monies we have, what obligations we absolutely have, what things may be coming up, what's going to happen to the price of oil and gas, which is kind of critical to our revenues." Daniels added, "What's the federal government going to do in terms of maybe ending some programs or sending money directly to the states? How does that affect us? These are some big unknowns."
Daniels said,"We have these issues in the Department of Mental Health with many millions of dollars kind of unaccounted for. And all those things go into what can we do to keep moving the income tax rate down and not get ourselves in some sort of a pickle with stuff that we couldn't have anticipated."
Kane responded saying, "On the tax cut, I think that I'm most interested in getting a path at this point. If we can get a cut with it, that's great. But I want to have a plan to where as revenues increase that that triggers some reductions."
Regarding businesses considering a move to Oklahoma, Representative John B. Kane said they seeing folks showing some interest in coming here.
Kane said, "I serve on what's called a lead committee, which looks at people that are interested in either growing their existing business in Oklahoma or bringing business in, and there's a lot of interest." Kane said that he supports incentives for companies that are committed that they're going to invest their capital in first, and then they provide the jobs that they say they can provide, and then we can incentivize them, and it's a good return on investment for the state."
Senator Daniels said, "We've had our economic development sales tax in place in Bartlesville now for, what, 40 years? And it has slowly and responsibly grown our community and our economy. I look back to that Walmart distribution center out there 25 years ago. That used state money and local money. That used quality jobs. Who could have thought that that would be such a driver of employment and good jobs and good corporate citizen? But we did that using the programs we had in place, and so Oklahoma can build on that."
« Back to News
