Oklahoma State Rep. Cody Maynard spoke during a recent board meeting of the Durant Area Chamber of Commerce to give board members updates on what’s happening in the state.
He said income taxes in the state have decreased slightly from last year.
“That tells me less income is happening,” Maynard said. “Our corporate tax is what really got hit. That’s down 44 percent. “Now, corporate taxes, they take big swings up and down, that’s not unusual, but again, I’m watching that as a marker for how our business is doing in the state. Overall, on all sources of income, we’re down about six percent compared to last year.
“We actually estimated we would be down this year, so we as a state, we budgeted on that. We’re going to have excess income compared to our budget because we already budgeted half of that.”
Unemployment numbers for the country were released in July and according to Maynard, there was a spike in unemployment across the nation.
“We’re not seeing that yet in Oklahoma,” he said. “Most of our numbers in Bryan County are still in the three percent range. The question I’m watching for is will we keep going down? Do we enter more of a recession time or do we level back off ? But on the state side, financially, this past year, we left $1 billion of money unspent to stick in our state reserves. So, we have $5 billion in state reserves. We have well prepared if we do have a downturn.”
Maynard spoke about the Roosevelt Bridge replacement project and he did not have much news on that other than repeating that the state has $200 million in bonding authority and the Oklahoma Department of Transportation is receiving $123.8 million in federal funds for the project, so there are enough funds for the project.
“What I am pushing for is the department of transportation in September and October, they work through redoing their eightyear plan and right now, that bridge isn’t scheduled to start until 2029,” Maynard said. “I am pushing them, but they don’t like me on this, I’m saying 2025. When you’ve got the money, get it going. They’re saying maybe 2026, so we will see for sure. They’ll have an official release in September/ October, but we need to get it done because within three years, that bridge is going to deteriorate to a point that we may have to put weight measuring on it or something like that.
“I just want you to know, I’m actively working on that. It’s something I’m tracking.”
Maynard also spoke of the state sales tax on groceries that ended in August which he said will provide a little bit of relief for people at the grocery store According to Maynard, the Oklahoma Department of Commerce is being reorganized into two divisions because of legislation.
These are the Oklahoma Division of Community Outreach and Revitalization Enterprise (CORE) and Division on Economic Development, Growth, and Expansion (EDGE).
“The hopes of this is it puts one half of them that they’re job is to promote economic development across the state, to work on a five-year plan that also has to do with workforce development, economic revitalization and the second group, CORE, their main job is to increase long-term development for local communities,” Maynard said.
Maynard said bills were passed that increase the retirement benefits for police officers and he said there have been problems with officers going to work in another state.
“So, this hopefully will retain more police officers through retirement,” Maynard said. “When you have more officers, you have better safety which is good for our communities.”
According to Maynard, Oklahoma has been graded overall as the 19th state in the nation for best tax policies and some big players in the country are beginning to look at Oklahoma.
“I’m very, very pleased about that,” Maynard said.
Next year, Maynard expects to see more policies regarding the State Department of Education and reforms to the pension system.
He spoke of the increases in cost of living.
“What we’re seeing and this is hitting every area in the state, I especially hate it when I talk to retirees who’ve been retired 20 years, who can’t afford to pay their rent,” Maynard said. “They can’t afford groceries and they have been our teachers, our police officers, our firefighters and so one thing that has not been happening is the cost of living adjustment.”
According to Maynard, there has been approximately a 30 percent increase in inflation since COVID in 2020.
“Their (retirees) check has stayed the same over those four years … that’s hitting our retirees hard,” Maynard said. “So, I’m going to be looking at and I’ve already talked to the governor’s office and trying to find a way to build in cost of living adjustments when our plans have sufficient funding. I think we can find some common ground there because we had some bills go through last year that got right to the finish line and died.”