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15th Street ews
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Volume XLV
May 2, 2016
@15thStreetNews
Issue 13
NEWS BRIEFS by Christian Tabak Assistant Editor
After months of debate over the incorporation of women onto U.S. currency, the Department of Treasury announced that abolitionist Harriet Tubman will replace President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill and that the $5 and $10 bills will experience changes as well. Tubman was a suffragette and abolitionist who was instrumental in the Underground Railroad. She was selected for her legacy of how an individual can impact democracy, according to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. But while Tubman may be replacing Jackson on the front, the Treasury has confirmed that the controversial president is being shifted to the reverse side of the bill. The Treasury also announced that the $10 bill will feature leaders of the women’s suffrage movement including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the $5 bill will feature prominent civil rights leaders Ellen Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. Although Lew said the new $10 bill will be in circulation by 2020, he said the $5 and $20 would not be available any time soon.
Criminal charges filed over Flint water crisis
Three government workers were charged with crimes related to the Flint, Michigan, water crisis and their role in covering up evidence of lead contamination. Thirteen criminal charges have been leveled at the workers, including accusations of tampering with reports on lead in the water, conspiring to manipulate water monitoring reports and misleading local and federal authorities. According to the results of the ongoing investigation, emails and other communication records showed the workers intentionally tampered with reports on the levels of lead in the city’s water to make them seem less dangerous than they actually were. Two of the workers were suspended without pay and the third is on administrative leave. If convicted, they face the possibility of up to five years in prison.
Photo by Jackson Parker
Harriet Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson on $20 bill
Due to a dramatic fall in the oil industry, Oklahoma’s education, healthcare and human services are impacted by budget cuts that limit personnel and services.
Budget cuts cause crisis State funding cutbacks cause severe shortfalls
by Christian Tabak Assistant Editor
As legislators continue working to close the state’s $1.3 billion budget gap, Gov. Mary Fallin has introduced a budget proposal that includes tax reforms and utilizing more than $500 million in bonds. While preventing further cuts to education, healthcare and human services, the proposal calls for the elimination of sales tax exemptions that include NBA tickets, horse sales and sales to commercial airlines and railroads. “We have to be careful that we don’t cut so far to the bone that we’re not effective in delivering state services,” Fallin said in a press conference April 13. If passed, officials said the measures would leave the state with $7 billion for the 2017 fiscal year, slightly less than what the state started with at the beginning of the 2016 fiscal year. The state’s first economic disaster since the 2008 recession, the 2016 shortfall came after a staggering 70 percent drop in crude oil prices that brought the the price per barrel of oil to the lowest it has been since 2003. In a state where almost every tax source and 25 percent of jobs are tied to the energy sector, the Oklahoma economy is particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in oil price, according to Professor of Economics Craig Dawkins. “The problem in being tied so closely to a commodity is the volatility of pricing and employment for people in that industry,” Dawkins said. RSC is one of many educational institutes that have felt the impact of the shortfall, which resulted in a 11 percent reduction in funding to higher education.
In response, RSC began enacting measures to reduce expenditures, and the administration recently announced plans for a four-day work week over the summer semester. “We are in this together, and we will weather the storm as long as we keep positive and focused on the task at hand: to serve our students to the best of our ability,” said RSC President Jeanie Webb in an email addressed to faculty and staff. Already, colleges across the state have enacted significant budget reductions and school districts were forced to consider fourday school weeks and job cuts that would affect more than 1,000 teachers and administrators. In April, Oklahoma City Public Schools dist rict announced plans for an 18 percent staff reduction that would see schools lose both administrative and teaching staff, while increasing classroom sizes as a result of a $30 million shortfall. “We are forced to make these difficult decisions as a result of the statewide $1.3 billion revenue failure,” said OKCPS Superintendent *Robert Neu. While legislators on both sides of the aisle expressed concerns over the reforms included in the governor’s budget proposal, lawmakers have only five weeks to develop an alternative before the end of the 2016 legislative session. “I challenge the legislature and ask them to work with me to roll up their sleeves, do the hard work, get into the details of the state budget, the needs of state agencies,” Fallin said in a press conference. *Quote from Robert Neu was obtained before his official separation from OKCPS.