Those of us who enjoy a good video game have all been there. You’re playing an NES title with a sibling or friend who, intentionally or unintentionally, annoys you by repeatedly whooping your character with the same move. Eventually, you reach your breaking point and angrily press the reset button to end the madness.
While I may not have much of an opinion on one of the Oklahoma Legislature’s biggest proposals this year, I do like Nintendo gaming references.
When I read about House Appropriations and Budget Committee Chairman Trey Caldwell’s so-called “TSET reset” idea, I imagined the complex policy drama playing out in terms I can understand. Caldwell (R-Lawton) says the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust is “not all bad,” but he does believe Oklahoma can see a higher return on its investment from the annual earnings of the roughly $2 billion trust fund.
Specifically, Caldwell is proposing HJR 1077, which would ask voters to eliminate the current TSET board, preserve the trust fund’s corpus protections and redirect its annual revenues to a major capacity increase for the Oklahoma Higher Learning Access Program, which covers college tuition for qualifying state students.
“Our projections are it would take approximately eight years before we reach enough distributions where we could pay for every single kid in Oklahoma to go to college,” Caldwell said. “But just in year one, we can double OHLAP.”
While it seems to an outsider like me that TSET is doing a decent job of highlighting the ills of smoking, I’m also a big advocate for education, so I understand the value Caldwell sees in giving young Oklahomans a path through college that doesn’t involve massive student loans. I know voters rejected a proposal to adjust TSET in 2020, however, so I suspect any change will face an up-hill battle.
Perhaps a spirited Tecmo Super Bowl tournament could help decide the issue for House members, who likely face a vote on HJR 1077 this week, I’m told.
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