Oh, Oklahoma

SOME weeks ago Oklahoma’s teacher of the year for 2016, Shawn Sheehan, dined in Washington, DC, with counterparts from California and Washington state. The mood was jolly until the high-flyers, all finalists for national teacher of the year, compared salaries. When Mr Sheehan—a young teacher of mathematics and special education—revealed his pay, his table-mates “sort of went silent”. For in state rankings of teachers’ pay Oklahoma comes 48th. Washington’s teacher of the year has since been urging Mr Sheehan to move to the West Coast. “He’s been sending me house listings,” he says, ruefully.

Oklahomans dislike such stories. They are sternly conservative: God-fearing, tornado-lashed prairie folk, so proud of their mineral wealth that an oil well stands next to the State Capitol, where feebler types might plant flowers. They scorn big government—the state is in the bottom third for tax revenue per person. But Oklahomans care about their public schools, which educate the vast majority of their kids, and which (notably via sport) are social anchors for many towns. So they wince when good teachers are lured elsewhere. Even now, as slumping oil and gas prices have been followed by a deep budget crisis, the Republican governor, Mary Fallin, says she wants to give teachers a raise, an ambition echoed by legislators from both parties. A poll last year found 98% of Oklahomans back higher classroom pay, dividing only over whether to raise salaries across-the-board, or on merit.

That consensus makes raising teachers’ pay a good test of basic governance. Alas, legislators negotiating a new budget have spent May failing it. Democrats blocked a scheme involving higher cigarette taxes, because they wanted some of the revenues for health care. Republicans introduced and withdrew a proposal to increase teachers’ pay while cutting their other benefits. Worse, with days left to fill a $1.3 billion hole in the budget, Republicans devoted long hours to further loosening gun laws, to arguing about transgender pupils in school bathrooms and to passing a law that sought to make performing almost all abortions a felony. That attempt to criminalise abortion was certain to be struck down as unconstitutional in the courts. Governor Fallin vetoed the law, calling it ambiguously worded. The only doctor in the state senate, a Republican who personally opposes abortion, was crisper in his diagnosis, calling the proposal “insane”.

Budget negotiations ended without a pay rise for teachers (and indeed resulted in a 16% cut to higher education), so the matter is now in the hands of voters. A bipartisan group wants to ask them to increase education funding by adding a penny in the dollar to state sales taxes in November. Their ballot measure, State Question 779, is backed by a former Democratic governor, David Boren, and a group of business bosses and former members of Ms Fallin’s cabinet. It aims to raise $615m, enough for a $5,000 increase per teacher. Even supporters admit that sales taxes are a clumsy way to raise money, because the poor spend a larger share of their incomes on day-to-day shopping. Mr Boren, an old-fashioned centrist who is now president of the University of Oklahoma, calls sales taxes “regressive” and would have been “thrilled” if lawmakers had acted. Mr Sheehan, another backer of the initiative, worries about the impact on low-income families, though he argues that schools are often their best ladder out of poverty. The ballot initiative amounts to voters telling legislators: “you guys are not doing your job,” says the teacher, who is running as an independent for the state senate in November.

Mr Boren sees a problem of political culture. For 25 years both Democrats and Republicans have won elections in Oklahoma by promising tax cuts. In the 1990s voters amended the state constitution so the legislature can only increase taxes if super-majorities of three-in-four members agree, or if voters say yes in a referendum. After living through three boom-and-bust commodities cycles, the 75-year-old ex-governor fretted as he saw Republicans cut state income taxes twice, against a backdrop of surging oil production and revenues. “Oklahomans got sold on a free lunch,” says Mr Boren. Businesses wanted a free lunch too, he adds: demanding tax breaks and subsidies, while still expecting a well-trained workforce. Republicans do not wholly disagree. Senator Rob Standridge represents the district that Mr Sheehan is contesting, near Oklahoma City. Though Mr Standridge defends low tax rates, he laments that states get into bidding wars to woo employers: “We spend way too much on incentives.”

Bound and gagged

The campaign behind the ballot initiative polled voters to ask if they would tolerate higher income, property or sales taxes to invest in education. Income taxes divided voters along partisan lines, with Republicans rejecting rises. As for property taxes, Oklahomans like them low—Mr Boren links this to their history as land-rich, cash-poor homesteaders. Most backed higher sales taxes. People tell Mr Boren that they like sales tax because “everybody pays it,” unlike fiddlier taxes that the rich can dodge.

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, a smaller-government group that tried to block the measure in court, says Oklahoma cities could end up with some of the country’s highest sales taxes. It points to polls showing an option that Oklahomans like better: paying teachers by cutting tax credits for wind and renewable energies, and other corporate subsidies. But that risks clashes between special interests: scrapping tax breaks for wind energy is a priority for Oklahoma’s mighty oil and gas industry.

A narrow question of public policy—how to stop Texas and other neighbours pinching Oklahoma teachers—has exposed broad, not very cheering truths about democracy. Elected politicians have prospered by urging voters to distrust them. Voters duly bound legislators’ hands to limit government mischief. Now Oklahoma is struggling to deliver a policy with near-universal support. Hope that someone learns a lesson from all this.