Oklahoma’s congressional delegation is reacting to President’s Biden's State of the Union Address. Representatives Stephanie Bice and Kevin Hern told KOCO that the southern border, along with the economy and energy, are issues that they would have liked to have seen the president address in his speech last night. Bice says not enough is being done to secure the border.
“We’ve had 4.5 million people illegally cross into the U.S. the last two years. That is more than the entire population of the state of Oklahoma," Bice said.
Bice also said that she thinks more needs to be done to help families in this time of inflation. Hern and Bice also say the Biden administration needs to do more to support energy policies in the state. In a statement, Congressman Tom Cole echoed similar reaction.
During his state of the state Monday, Gov. Kevin Stitt said he wanted to make Oklahoma one of the best states to attract businesses. He touted Amazon, Google and American Airlines presence. However, last year a report touted another job creator: tribes.
Tribal nations are a big employer in Oklahoma. A 2022 report by the Oklahoma Tribal Finance Consortium found tribal nations employ more than 54,000 people and have a $2.6 billion dollar impact.
Stitt talked about training workers for the future. But he left out examples of work done by tribes like the Cherokee Nation, which is set to open a new career readiness center this year.
Kyle Dean is the director for the Center for Native American and Urban Studies at Oklahoma City University. He co-authored the tribal impact report.
"Think about any company in the United States that would say, yes, we will do all of that and locate and Durant Oklahoma. There's not one. And that's essentially what I just described, is what the tribes do in communities throughout the state and have been doing for years," said Dean.
Dean says tribal nations provide the infrastructure, job training, health care and dollars to local schools-without tax incentives. He said it would be a different story if you asked any business to do that without offering something in return.
Gov. Kevin Stitt announced a new focus for his administration: protecting children in foster care.
Monday marked Stitt’s fifth State of the State address, but it was the first where he said foster care needed to be a major priority for the state.
"Protecting Oklahomans means making sure our foster care system prioritizes kids and making families whole," Stitt said.
Stitt says the number of children in “out of home” care, which includes those in foster care, has decreased from 11,300 to 6,500 over the past 8 years.
That time frame includes efforts taken under Gov. Mary Fallin. Foster care was a major issue then — starting in 2012. That year, the state settled a class action lawsuit against the state, arguing its foster care system was failing to protect children from abuse and neglect. The settlement led to The Pinnacle Plan, a years-long improvement project that brought in neutral third-party monitors. That plan is ongoing.
After months of worsening drought, Oklahomans saw some improvement last week. But most of the state is still exceptionally dry.
The U.S. Drought Monitor releases a report every week. It classifies areas by five different stages of drought based on precipitation, soil moisture and other statistics.
Last week, Oklahoma’s report showed improvements in all five categories. From July to the beginning of December, 100% of the state was in some stage of drought.
But even after snow and rain over the last few weeks, 95% of the state is still there. Northern Oklahoma remains in extreme or exceptional drought, which can lead to water shortages and agricultural losses. But parts of the state’s southeast corner have escaped drought classification for now.
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