Rep. Murdock running for state senate District 27 seat

 

December 3, 2017

District 61 State Representative Casey Murdock speaks with the Alva Review-Courier about several key political topics, including prison overcrowding and turnover, rural health care, public education, and solving the state's budget problems. Murdock is running for the District 27 State Senate seat. The interview can be seen at www.alvareviewcourier.com.

Casey Murdock runs a cow/calf operation in Cimarron County at the western-most end of the panhandle. For the past three years he's also been a state representative for District 61.

Now he's campaigning for a seat in the State Senate, representing District 27, a nine county area including Woods County.

He recently talked with the Alva Review-Courier about how he would work to address issues involving the Department of Corrections, rural public schools and health care, higher education, and the budget crisis.

Pay Prison Staff Better; Improve Mental Health Care to Prevent Overcrowding

Two of the major problems Mudock sees the state Department of Corrections struggling with are overcrowding and high staff turnover. Good wages may go a long way to solving the latter problem, Murdock said.

"That's a tough job for anyone, to be a guard," he said. "They have a tough job. It's a dangerous job. If we pay them what they're worth and for what they're doing, I think that would fix the turnover rate."

Solving the overcrowding problem may be more complicated.

"I believe there's consequences for your actions," Murdick said. "If you are a danger, you need to be locked away. As a state representative, I feel I have a responsibility to protect the public."

But better, more timely, more accessible treatment for substance abuse could keep people with addiction issues from derailing to such an extent that they wind up being incarcerated in the first place.

"The overcrowding with the drug offenses – I think we need to increase mental health," Murdock said. "Especially in northwest Oklahoma all the way out into the panhandle, we need more mental health programs.

"I had a really, really good friend of mine call me this summer and his son was messed up on meth. He's 22. He'd come home, and he was wanting help (withdrawing from the drug). If you know anything about it, you know you have a very short window in there that they ask for help. This friend of mind was wanting to find someplace (for rehabilitation for the son) and he called me. I started making phone calls and I was shocked and disappointed. The closest bed that I could find for him was in Enid, and from where I live that's four hours away. They wound up taking him to Amarillo, Texas (for rehab). The meth problem is getting horrible in northwest Oklahoma, and it's something we need to address. And I think once we address mental health, that will help with the overcrowding."

Stop Cutting Higher Education Funding

Murdock graduated from Panhandle State University with a degree in ag business, so "Panhandle State is really close to my heart," he said. "At the state capitol, I'll go to different members' offices and they have an OU flag or an OSU flag hanging. Well, I contacted the president of Panhandle State and said 'I want a Panhandle State flag to hang in my office.' People ask me who I root for, and I say "I root for Panhandle State," he said, grinning.

"These regional universities in Oklahoma are important," Murdock said, saying he worries that rural kids who graduate from a small school and head straight to a large university may be at greater risk of dropping out more due to culture shock than educational demands.

Kids who grow up in rural Oklahoma going to small-town schools "with a class of 10 or 8 or 3, and then walk into a class at Stillwater and there's 300 or 400 in a class – it's kind of overwhelming. If a kid goes to Northwestern and wants to finish there, that's great, but if he wants to (later go to a larger university), it kind of helps him transition," Murdock said.

The repeated cuts to funding for higher education puts these regional universities at risk, he said. "I was visiting with the president of Panhandle State, and in the past two years they've had 27 percent cuts. Northwestern this last year, I think, was 17 percent. We cannot continue cutting."

Also of concern to Murdock is Gov. Fallin's executive order involving the consolidation of higher education administration.

"I think we might have a constitutional issue there; I don't know if she has the authority to do that. I'll wait and let the state regents and supreme court decide on that, but I just don't think she can do that."

High Cost of Consolidating Rural Public School Administration

The potential consolidation of K-12 public school administration also concerns Murdock, who was on the Felt, Oklahoma, school board for 10 years.

"That's the one that really concerns me," he said, especially when it comes to rural schools. "The K-12 enrollment (in Felt) is about 100. It concerns me because after consolidating administrations the next step is consolidating the schools. In rural Oklahoma the school is the community and when you close the school down (through consolidation) you lose the community. I do not want to see that happen."

Murdock graduated from Felt High School in 1988, and from the time he started kindergarten school Felt schools were always under the threat of closure. "The community took in foreign exchange students and did everything they could think off to keep it open. So that's one thing I fight so hard for in the capitol, is to make sure our rural schools are funded."

Being on the school board in Felt taught him a lot about how school administration works, and he feels that while consolidating school administration may possibly save a little money, what would be lost is something of even greater value. "Even if the schools don't wind up being consolidated, in a small rural school the superintendent knows every kid, knows their faces, knows their parents, knows what those kids are going through." If administrations are consolidated, "the county superintendent doesn't know the kids – and the concern is, are we turning these kids from faces to a number on a report? I think once we've done that, we've lost the battle in education."

We Must Keep Our Rural Hospitals

"I've been accused of voting for the highest tax raise in Oklahoma – a tax on cigarettes and a tax on low-point beer," said Murdock. "If I have to make a choice between taxing cigarettes or my rural hospitals closing, I'm going to tax the cigarettes; that's a no-brainer. In my three years as state representative, every year my hospitals call me saying, 'We're barely making it,' 'We can't make payroll at the end of the month,' or 'It's hard finding doctors to come out here.'

"We have to keep our rural hospitals. One thing that concerns me is if you lose the hospital, you lose the nursing home and you lose investment in your community. A company is not going to come into a town or community if they don't have a hospital.

"If you lose the hospital, it's devastating to the community. Rural Oklahoma will dry up and die if we do not have our hospitals. At the capitol, a lot of times it's not Democrat vs. Republican, it's urban vs. rural. I've told them, you know you guys go skiing all the time and you drive right through here. What happens if you have a car wreck? You'd want that hospital close nearby and functional."

Many-Faceted Approach to State Budget Problems

This past year Murdock wrote a bill that would conduct performance audits of the top 20 agencies in the state. It's modeled after the Ohio performance audit system, which has been very successful, resulting in about $200 million in savings, Murdock said.

Since Ohio's budget is about three times as large as Oklahoma's, Murdock estimates the bill would find about $70 million or so in savings – eliminating overlaps, increasing efficiencies.

But performance audits would only be one piece in the puzzle, he said.

"This past year, our hole in the budget was $868 million. A performance audit bill is not the silver bullet. During the special session, we heard a lot of rhetoric about how we need to do audits. And I agree. As public servants, we need to be spending your tax dollars as efficiently as we can. But we need to look at several options. There's not a silver bullet out there."

Another bill Murdock voted on raised gross production tax to 4 percent. "It had a lot of people unhappy. At the capitol you hear all kinds of stories, hear all kinds of testimonies, and you have to filter everything you hear to kind of find the truth.

"Last year we ran the long-lateral (drilling) bill. We got that passed, but just barely. At that time we had a lot of oil companies offer to go to 4 percent (gross production tax) if we could get this passed, and we got it passed without going to 4 percent. That was in May. In special session we had 4 percent on the board, and they said, 'If you raise it to 4 percent it's just going to kill us.' I don't know what happened in the four months between regular session and special session. I voted for it. But raising GPT isn't the silver bullet; it's a piece of the puzzle.

There was also a lot of talk in the special session about raising taxes on wealthy individuals and large companies, he said. "I don't believe in punishing people for success. But we have to look at different options" to solve Oklahoma's budget shortfall.

More Compromise Needed at the Capitol

Murdock has learned a thing or two from his first steps running for state representative.

"When you're starting a campaign, you think you know the issues and you're talking about ideas and where you stand on this and that," he said.

"And this year in the senate campaign I did a debate in Boise City and it was 'Do you believe in the Constitution; will you follow the Constitution." Murdock sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, and said, "Yes."

"When you get to the capitol, you follow the Constitution, but the basic fundamentals of how the state of Oklahoma works – I wish there were more questions on the logistics, on how to get things done. Because in my opinion we have too many ideologues at the capitol. They get up and they go on and on and on about, 'Well, I don't believe in this and this and this.'

"We have to have more compromise. That's a lot of the reason why we went into special session: there were enough ideologues who threw a wrench in the works and stopped everything up. We have to have more compromise and people working together.

"I can tell you, at the state capitol no one gets everything they want. We have to be able to meet people in the middle."

 

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