2001 Town Hall...

Town Hall Goals and Actions
Oklahoma Academy Goal 1
Create a culture of learning in Oklahoma

Elevate the value placed on education and significantly increase the percentage of Oklahomans who graduate and who actively engaged in the process of lifelong learning. Focus on growing people by developing motivation to greatness.

Overcome the skill shortages in the following fields by increasing the number of graduates who work in Oklahoma in those fields: science, engineering, information technology (IT) and math.

Increase the number of females and minorities who graduate in the IT field to 25% within 10 years.

Retain and maximize human capital by striving for high school and post-secondary graduation rates that exceed the national average, and finding ways to not only import human capital but keep Oklahoma students in state, especially in the areas of science, engineering, manufacturing, information technology, the health sciences and other high-skill, high-pay areas.

In 5 years 95% of our 9th graders should graduate from high school. The implementation of a flexible delivery option for a 4x4 program where students have the opportunity, accessibility, and availability to take the classes, with standardized reading and writing test scores at the 70th percentile.

Be recognized for having an educated workforce and an education system with institutions that are safe, high-performing leading organizations, holding expectations high for the achievement of all students, and preparing them for a lifetime of learning and working.
Increase capacity of digital and telecommunications capabilities to provide educational opportunities to students in the public school system as well as adults outside the school system.

Improve and enhance workforce through efforts and cooperation by common, career and higher education to enhance our competitive advantage. Support “Brain Gain” objectives that meet or exceed national average in individuals over 25 that hold bachelor degrees. Also support the need for trained technical personnel.

Enhance visibility and use of intern partnership programs throughout the state and expand their use in career tech, common and higher education.

Adopt a “Pre-K through 14” educational philosophy with every child and student ready to learn. Ensure that 13 and 14 year opportunities are accessible and affordable for every Oklahoma student.

Include arts and music teachers in every grade school.

Become the first state to adopt a Pre-K through 14 educational system with every child ready to learn.

Emphasize the importance of public service by promoting community service by students.

Seamless integration of grades 11-12 working with career techs or colleges and universities on a system-wide basis.

Follow Bachelor, PhD, Masters in Science, Engineering & Math to find out whether we are keeping them in our state and why. Implement a standardized “follow up” program to follow people at all levels of education to examine where they are located, salary levels, types of positions held and whether they are employed in their field of study.

We should consider proposing an initiative petition to adopt a statewide lottery to provide as much as $300M of additional financing for the state. The proceeds of this lottery should be placed into a “phased” endowment and used to improve science, technology and education. The proceeds should not be used to fund or replace funding in the state’s operating budgets.

The state must use a portion of the tobacco settlement to fund Oklahoma’s under-funded endowed chairs, additional and super chairs.

Increase faculty at Oklahoma’s research universities by 50% within five years in areas which will enhance the economic development of the state.

Oklahoma Academy Goal 2

Encourage and support science and technology based innovation, entrepreneurship and economic competitiveness.

Identify state owned nonproductive assets and ownership interests to be converted to productive cash endowments. Such assets and interests for consideration should include; GRDA, OneNet, State Insurance Fund, State office buildings. A joint business/legislative task force will identify prospective assets and interests and estimate the value of such prospects. Such sales and endowments would be conducted by contracting through competitive bidding with an investment bank to manage the sales. Identify an Academy subcommittee to solicit 3 year sponsors and initiate the first conference February, 2003.

• Resolve Tax Increment Financing Authorities issues by 2003.

• Study the feasibility of providing broadband telecommunications services to all towns and cities, urban and rural within five years.

• Expand the mission of the Oklahoma Transportation (Turnpike) Authority to include other forms of transportation and communication. The new Communications and Transportation Authority would be authorized in 2003 and would consider:

  • Direct air flights and potential direct subsidies.

  • Expansion of telecommunications including OneNet.

  • High speed rail traffic connecting Tulsa and Oklahoma City to Dallas and Kansas City.

  • Support for Oklahoma’s waterways.

  • Expanded highways and highway maintenance.

  • Focus on making Oklahoma the most revitalized and vibrant rural state in U.S. Measured by: 100 Certified Mainstreet communities and other community group projects; $1 billion of reinvestment; increase in number of small business; endorsing internal Mainstreet measurements.

  • Economic competitiveness: Attract and grow high performance companies.

  • Improve the access of small businesses to information.

  • Community leadership programs expanded to rural Oklahoma; Identify and develop leaders to revitalize rural America incentives for agriculture and create new or expand existing incentives for capturing further value from our extraction based industries such as energy, agriculture, timber, and other natural resources.

  • Technology and business cluster development. Identify five key industry anchors to promote and market Oklahoma’s R&D and corporate assets. Increase significantly public and private R & D in Oklahoma through the cooperative effects of existing research institutions and also of business development. Increase inflow of federal dollars with help of our congressional delegates.

  • Enhance our intermodal transportation system.

  • Increase pool of venture capital in Oklahoma.

  • Promote regionalization. Convene leaders from region on how to utilize and leverage resources of region using cooperation and cross fertilization. One of these groups should be created within each of four state quadrants.

  • Generation of emerging technology intensive industries-including biotech; bioag, biomed and other related biological areas, nanotechnology, telecommunications, software and advanced materials.

  • State government should take action to provide information to small businesses. It should improve access to and streamline delivery of information.

  • The Department of Commerce needs to be communicating more effectively with chambers, Mainstreet and other organizations. The Department of Commerce needs to maintain the Business Incentive Guide and How to Do Business in Oklahoma guide current and up to date and it should be available online. The Department of Commerce should regularly hold educational meetings with local chambers of commerce and business development groups.

  • Increase the total number of Oklahomans employed by knowledge-based businesses.

  • Enhance the quality, quantity and entrepreneurship of Oklahoma human capital.

  • We should request the state to match private funds reinvested in the local economy and community. For example, the state could use revenue from one of the proposed revenue generating policies to fund an endowment which could then provide matching grants to leverage federal grants which require matching, such as SBIR grants.

  • Initiative petition to raise fuel taxes for infrastructure purposes by 4 to 8 cents.

  • Develop and pass the “Electron Development Fund Act” - levying a tax on kilowatts of energy and target the funds to improving educational excellence and/or investments in technology and/or to offset the revenue impact other targeted tax cuts.

  • Minority Report (Electron Dev Fund Act): Oppose the passage of the “Electron Development Fund Act”, appearing on page 45. Electricity is an exportable product. As such, we should encourage the development of that industry which adds value to our energy resources. By taxing electricity as an exported commodity, we discourage development and investment. The net result would be to make Oklahoma products less competitive with producers in surrounding states. This is in conflict with our goal to import dollars to our economy, An “electron” tax on electricity would be no different than a “molecule” tax on all manufactured products.

  • We should remedy our tax structure to reduce the top marginal income tax rates, increase the dollar amount at which the income tax begins, expand the sales tax base and eliminate income tax on capital gains. Encourage the next generation of family farmers and ranchers to stay in agriculture by eliminating Oklahoma’s death tax, or at a minimum adopting federal exemption levels.

  • Encourage growth and development of a statewide broadband and digital telecommunications network by supporting state and federal policy changes which encourage private investment in digital and broadband telecommunication technologies.

  • Allow private business access to OneNet.

  • Consider privatizing the management of OneNet by leasing the system to the private sector.

  • Create an incentive on the state’s tax code that allows high performance Oklahoma companies to sell net operating losses to other companies.

  • Eliminate or reduce the state income tax on capital gains.

  • Encourage Oklahoma pension funds to invest in Oklahoma businesses.

• Create and sustain a quality of life that is attractive to globally competitive businesses and employees.
• Exceed the national average in personal per capita income and cut poverty in half within 10 years.
• Ensure that a high quality of life accompanies economic progress. We should be particularly attentive to fostering social and entertainment opportunities that make Oklahoma more attractive to younger people.
• Build on the potential strengths inherent in our cultural diversity by overcoming our historic racial and cultural divisions. Establish a series of state sponsored conferences using the Conference on the Status of Women as a model examining the status of diversity issues in Oklahoma. The conference should be initiated by joint resolution in the 2002 session of the legislature.
• Develop awareness of social issues within the state. Oklahoma must reduce instances of child abuse, divorce and teenage pregnancies and increase access to health care in our state. A reduction in the instances of these social ills and others will result in a reduction of criminal activity and thus a decrease in the overall incarceration rate.
• Create community health benchmarks that encompass issues like teen pregnancy, illegal drug use and smoking to make significant improvements in every category. Refer to State of the State Health Report Card for specifics. Analyze results by charting progress reported in annual reports that contain both absolute and relative measure.
• Providing for a tax increase on cigarettes of amount not greater than 15 cents, reflecting a desire to protect Oklahoma small business in the state’s border communities, and to direct such amounts resulting from said increase to create and support endowed chairs as well as the development of a cancer center in the state of Oklahoma.

Oklahoma Academy Goal 4:

Promote Oklahoma as a focus of innovation and development:

• Initiate a world conference based in Oklahoma that reviews current developments in technology, entertainment and design.
• Broaden ODOC’s image enhancement program to emphasize an extensive internal image campaign to promote state pride in addition to the external economic development campaign.