Coburn makes his case for repealing tax hikes

TULSA — In an exclusive interview with KRMG, former US Senator Tom Coburn explained that while he favors a pay raise for teachers, he’s convinced there was no need to raise taxes to fund those raises.

That’s why he’s backing the proposed State Question 799, which would repeal House Bill 1010xx, which lawmakers passed to provide money for the teacher pay hike.

The real problem, Coburn says, is a complete lack of accountability and transparency in state government.

[Follow this link to hear or download the full KRMG interview with Sen. Coburn, or use the audio player below]

“I think our state government is in a mess,” he said Monday. “I don’t think we’ve had good leadership during the last eight years. I think we have a lot of crony influence and ‘good old boy’ influence. And I think we ought to pay our teachers more than what that raise was.”

And the state has the money, Coburn told KRMG.

“Oklahoma has $1.3 billion more now than we did last year, and we have plenty of money to fund that pay raise,” he said.

The taxes that were passed will fall largely on the very people the raises are intended to help, he added.

But most importantly, he sees a major problem with how state government operates in Oklahoma.

“There’s not one agency in the state that’s had oversight in more than 20 years,” Coburn said, “and so you see the things that happened in the health department where the director had a $40 million slush fund, and the accounting department couldn’t tell them that they actually had the money to pay the people but they laid them off anyway, and the legislature gave them $30 million that they didn’t need. That’s the kind of incompetency that causes us to raise taxes when we don’t need to.”

He has a solution, he told KRMG.

“What should happen in Oklahoma City, and I’ve been proposing this for two years and nobody’s listening, is a bipartisan - Democrats and Republicans and Independents - bicameral committee with subpoena power, and a staff that works year round to make sure we’re seeing transparently how our money’s spent. And that’s not happening in Oklahoma. So we don’t know how our money’s spent. Actually, nobody knows how our money’s spent. Because each department runs its own finances.”

The Oklahoma Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on two challenges to the petition drive for State Question 799.

The justices could potentially rule against the ballot measure, and Coburn says the possibility troubles him deeply.

He believes that according to the state Constitution, they have to uphold the petition process.

“I don’t know what they’ll do. If they don’t do it, then Oklahoma’s sunk. Because if the people don’t have a right to make a decision on how much they get taxed, even though our Constitution says we do, then we’re dead already.”