Drummond, legislators question estimated state budget revenue figure
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and some Oklahoma legislators say they are concerned with Oklahoma’s state budget estimate for the upcoming fiscal year, after it was approved by Governor Stitt and other Oklahoma Board of Equalization members Friday.
Budget stuff might be one of the more boring political topics.
But it’s important.
“The budget is how we spend money in the state of Oklahoma,” said State Rep. Andy Fugate (D-Del City).
And occasionally, budget stuff can bring political fireworks, like Friday, when Attorney General Gentner Drummond didn’t show up for the Oklahoma State Board of Equalization meeting.
The Board of Equalization is made up of top state officials, including the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, state auditor, state treasurer, state superintendent, and Secretary of Agriculture.
Every December, the board comes together to hear from experts with the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES), who keep track of the state’s tax revenue.
OMES is an executive branch agency under the governor’s authority.
Those OMES experts tell board of equalization members how much money in tax revenue estimate the state will take in and be able to spend in the coming fiscal year.
On Friday, they told the board their revenue estimate for the upcoming fiscal year is around $8.6 billion, down a bit from the previous year.
At Friday’s meeting, the present board members voted to accept that estimate.
That means Governor Stitt can now get to work putting together his executive budget, a list of priorities for how he’d like to see the legislature spend the estimated revenue in the coming year.
Of course, Attorney General Drummond was absent for Friday’s vote.
In a news release Friday, Drummond said he has a “lack of confidence” in the revenue projections the board heard, and did not want to take part in revenue discussions until the board could consult more experts.
Below is the text of the news release Drummond’s Office published shortly after the board voted Friday:
Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced shortly before today’s Board of Equalization meeting that he lacks confidence in the budget numbers provided by the Stitt Administration, calling instead for increased legislative involvement in the process.
“I come from the private sector, where you don’t play games with your budget,” Drummond said. “After sitting through several of these meetings, as well as briefings from the Governor’s chosen staff, I can tell you that I have no confidence in the accuracy or completeness of the Governor’s budget numbers.”Drummond cited recent examples of discrepancies and inaccuracies that eroded his confidence. In December of 2023, the Board of Equalization was told there would be $8,976,523,862 available for appropriation in FY25. By February, 10 days after the Governor laid out his budget priorities, that number had increased to $9,037,537,501. This increase bolstered the Governor’s argument for a proposed income tax cut. Now those same February numbers are projected to be off by $390 million, while the Oklahoma Tax Commission is reporting that expected revenue will drop by $528 million.
“Last December, we were told one amount, then in February it was a new number that was magically enough to pay for the Governor’s tax cut,” Drummond said. “I’m all for lowering the tax burden on Oklahoma families, but let’s not play political games with the budget numbers. Let’s have an open and transparent process where the numbers don’t change just because the Governor wants them to.”
Drummond said the process would be greatly improved by increased legislative involvement in the development of budget projections.
“The people of Oklahoma elected every legislator the same way they elected the Governor,” Drummond said. “As a Constitutional officer who has a duty to certify these numbers, I would have much more confidence in their accuracy if House and Senate budget leaders and their staff played a more significant role in the process.”
Drummond’s announcement today comes after being the lone “no” vote in the Board of Equalization meeting in February of this year. At the time, Drummond’s office said his “no” vote was “a reflection of his lack of confidence in certain revenue estimates that were provided.”In light of his lack of confidence in the figures, Drummond did not attend today's meeting.
News release from Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond's Office
News 4 reached out to Governor Stitt’s Office to get his reaction to the release published by Drummond’s office Friday.
A spokesperson for the governor sent News 4 the following statement:
If the Attorney General had concerns, he had a perfect opportunity to raise those concerns during the meeting. It’s a shame he missed a meeting of a constitutional board of which he is a member.
Spokesperson for Gov. Kevin Stitt
“[Drummond] is not wrong, in my opinion,” State Rep. Meloyde Blancett (D-Tulsa) told News 4. “And being cautious about what the moneys are that we have to spend.”
Blancett is worried the state may bring in less revenue than estimated.
She points out that the state has already cut its available spending money by quite a bit when the legislature eliminated the grocery tax and created the parental choice private school tax credit last year.
“Those are major spending items, almost $1 Billion of spending just on those two programs,” Blancett said. “And so if you look at that, and if you look at, historically, that there's been some ups and downs with regard to that estimate, and then if you consider the political environment that we're getting ready to go into with this next legislative session and all of the conversation about personal tax cuts, personal all of this other stuff about tax cuts, I mean, it would cause you to be concerned.”
“The projections that we saw today don't appear to take into account the realities that we're facing as a nation,” Rep. Fugate said.
Fugate points out that much of the state’s tax revenue income is out of the state’s control.
“We're looking at a potential federal government shutdown that's going to have enormous economic impact to every state in the nation,” Fugate said. “You compound that with the proposed threatened tariffs, which will also be a real economic drain on the state of Oklahoma and the rest of the country. People won't buy as much. They won’t. So our sales taxes will go down. Businesses that are dependent on sales of goods, they're going to see fewer reduced sales. And then the other is this ‘drill, baby, drill’ notion that you know, we're going to increase oil production tremendously under the incoming president. It ignores the fact that we're already at historic oil production today. But if we have more oil being produced, that means more oil on the market. And sadly, for Oklahoma, that means the price of oil is going to go down and gross production taxes will go down. And that should have been at least identified as part of what they were talking about today. I didn't hear it as part of the projections. And so it bothers me a lot that these appear to be pie in the sky rosy projections, not based on actual economic challenges that we're looking at.”