By Andrew Knittle
While two Republican lawmakers from the Norman area agree at least some of the Rainy Day Fund likely will be tapped as the state continues to experience slumping revenues, they each cautioned against using too much of it too soon.
Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, said Oklahoma is "running out of good options, quickly."
"It's not a question of if we're going to tap the Rainy Day Fund," he said. "It's a question of when, for how much and for what purpose."
Terrill said legislators need to be careful when deciding how much to spend, especially when economic recovery isn't exactly in sight.
"I'm not sure where the bottom of the trough is and I don't know that we've reached it yet," he said. "If we use all of the Rainy Day Fund now, we could be setting ourselves up to fall off a bigger cliff in the next fiscal year and beyond."
Rep. Scott Martin, R-Norman, agreed the Rainy Day Fund likely will be tapped and also expressed concern about relying too heavily on the funds with an economic future as uncertain as it is.
"At this point in time, I'm certainly willing to look at using it (Rainy Day Fund), but it needs to be just one of the options on the table," Martin said. "We concerned about fiscal year 2010, but we're equally concerned about the future.
"We need to not spend it all right now because we're still not sure what this economy's going to do."
Martin said he's optimistic about the state's recovery, noting that last month's revenue shortfall wasn't as bad as the previous month. He also said the housing market has shown improvement recently and that the state's unemployment rate -- while higher than it normally is -- is still far lower than the national figure.
Both Martin and Terrill also said that general, across-the-board cuts -- which has been the policy thus far -- won't get it done as the state continues to struggle with revenue shortfalls. Each said that "targeted" cuts to agencies outside the core group of transportation, education, public safety and public health need to be looked at by lawmakers.
"Whatever the case, we're going to make some really tough decisions when we get together to decide this," Martin said. "This is a financial situation, across the nation, that we haven't seen since the Great Depression.
"We need to look a multiple solutions to this problem and think long-term."
Andrew Knittle
366-3540
aknittle@normantranscript.com
