By Constitution Staff

Joined by students, educators and parents, an initiative petition drive officially was launched September 18 seeking a statewide vote on providing storm shelters in Oklahoma public schools. The petition drive, dubbed Take Shelter Oklahoma (TSO), came four months after a spate of May tornadoes killed 47 people. On May 20, a twister destroyed two schools in Moore and took the lives of seven children at one of them, Plaza Towers Elementary. Governor Mary Fallin is opposed to the proposal which calls for the sale of $500 million bonds to be paid back using the state's franchise tax on businesses.

"There are things that will have to be cut to fund $500 million of bonds so that people just need to be educated in how all that's going to work," Gov. Fallin said. A press release from TSO says the governor isn't telling the truth. They claim nothing will have to be cut from current state spending. "The fact is, no program at any level of the state government has been funded by the franchise tax since 2008." While it is true that "no program" is directly funded with the money from the franchise tax, programs and services are currently funded with the money. The revenues from the franchise tax go into the state General Revenue Fund (GRF) and the Governor and the Legislature budget those funds along with the other revenues collected. With the recent downturn in funds flowing into the General Revenue Fund (see the story elsewhere in this issue), a further erosion of those funds could be a serious matter.

It is estimated that it will cost about $40 million per year to service the bonds. Diverting money from the GRF would reduce the funds available for other needs, such as education, public safety and health care. In recent years bills have been proposed to end the franchise tax to help in the effort to attract new businesses to the state. Earmarking the funds to pay the bonds could block those efforts.

The Franchise Tax is levied annually on all corporations that do business in Oklahoma. Corporations are taxed $1.25 for each $1,000 of capital invested or used in Oklahoma. Foreign corporations are additionally assessed $100 per year, payable to the Oklahoma Tax Commission, for the Secretary of State acting as their registered agent.

The governor also says that building safe rooms is a local issue and that local school boards should decide whether they want them or not. TSO also responded to that statement and says that under its effort, "No school district would be required to build a storm shelter."

State Rep. Joe Dorman (D-Rush Springs), a member of the TSO steering committee, said the state bond funding for the storm shelters is necessary because numerous school districts have limited bonding capacity and already must make difficult choices with the resources they have. "Protecting children is the responsibility of every Oklahoman," he said. "Parents deserve the peace of mind that their kids at school can have sufficient shelter during life-threatening weather. In this region of the nation, that is far from a hypothetical situation." Dorman said that if the funding of storm shelters is left solely to school districts, scores of communities would have no option but to raise property taxes. A survey released by TSO said that nearly 60 percent of Oklahoma schools have no safe space for students and employees to be sheltered from severe weather.

Kathy Turner, the chairwoman of Take Shelter Oklahoma and a former Oklahoma School Superintendent, said the bond issue would allow Oklahoma school districts to possibly leverage Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) dollars for a 3-to-1 match, depending on federal guidelines and available dollars. The 2015 International Building Code, developed by the International Code Council, requires that newly built schools have storm shelters able to withstand winds up to 250 mph.

Take Shelter Oklahoma has 90 days to collect signatures of nearly 160,000 registered Oklahoma voters. If they are able to gain the required number of valid signatures, Gov. Mary Fallin would set a date to place the issue on a statewide ballot.