The Big Smoked Pig
By Theodore King...
This season we read and hear a barrage of press stories about Oklahoma's budget shortfall due to falling oil prices. The legislature is looking for ways to make ends meet including cuts to existing programs that benefit people in need. Just this past week we learned of a shortfall in the state's share of the Medicaid program for the indigent. There is a big smoked pig in our state that should be carved up to take care of some immediate needs. The legislature merely needs to approve a proposed state question that could be placed on the November ballot.
This season we read and hear a barrage of press stories about Oklahoma's budget shortfall due to falling oil prices. The legislature is looking for ways to make ends meet including cuts to existing programs that benefit people in need. Just this past week we learned of a shortfall in the state's share of the Medicaid program for the indigent. There is a big smoked pig in our state that should be carved up to take care of some immediate needs. The legislature merely needs to approve a proposed state question that could be placed on the November ballot.
On March 9th the State Senate passed Senate Joint Resolution 71, by Senator Josh Brecheen of Coalgate, by a vote of 33 to 11. It went on to the House and currently sits in the Rules Committee awaiting further action. If SJR is passed by the House it will become a state question to be decided by Oklahoma voters in November. What SJR would do is provide needed funds for the state Medicaid program from the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET) which was created in 2000 by voters to spend the state's share of the money from the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between tobacco companies and 46 states including Oklahoma. The problem with TSET's creation was that it was never designed to reimburse the state for medical care through the Medicaid program. Rather, it was created as a funding program for health related social engineering projects though a board of directors appointed by the governor, attorney general, state treasurer, speaker of the house and the senate pro-tempore. This appointed board would decide how TSET funds were spent. Should SJR become a state question and approved by voters, the elected legislature not a board will determine how those funds are spent.
Last spring it was reported by Associated Press that TSET has a billion dollars in the bank as a result of payments from the tobacco companies starting in the late 1990s. A billion dollars...and none of it is spent on medical needs! Instead, TSET funds programming on public television programs on the Oklahoma Education Television Authority (OETA), radio, television and print ads about the evils of tobacco and secondhand smoke, bribes (yes, bribes) to municipalities if they ban smoking on municipal properties, even bigger bribes if they ban vaping (electronic cigarettes) on same municipal properties. Billboards against the evil deeds of tobacco and other billboards recommending the consumption of peas and water. Yes, TSET encourages you (living organisms) to drink water. It should be noted that in all of those TSET ads media consultants are getting rich. That money is spent by TSET on social engineering rather than caring for the indigent poor. That needs to change.
The one and only thing TSET does that is mission focused is operate a tobacco quit line for those ready and willing to abstain from cigarettes.
TSET's creation in 2000 was great for social planners in the political class like former State Treasurer Robert Butkin and former Attorney General Drew Edmonson, and then Lt. Governor Mary Falling, the media that benefits from advertising dollars, municipalities that financially benefit from the placement of no smoking and no vaping signs. But TSET was never designed to benefit the people who really need it, the indigent poor via Medicaid programs. That needs to change with passage of Senate Joint Resolution 71 and the Oklahoma voters this fall in a state question.
