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November 17, 2009

Laughlin puts in candidate bid

Sees need to stop wasting state’s money

Kevin Kerr

DUNCAN — Owen Laughlin, 12-year member of the state senate, and northwest Oklahoma representative has announced he is running for state treasurer.

“I have been appalled in the last few years at the enormous waste in state government,” Laughlin said. “It is literally robbing our school children, our road building and every other necessary endeavor of Government. Now is the time to mount an all out war on waste in government.”

Laughlin was in the banking business for 20 years, is a former assistant district attorney and has successfully owned and managed a variety of other businesses.

He said that his background in business management will only help his ability to save the state money, and run the treasury department in a more organized manner.

“Any business man would be appalled at the way we run our state,” Laughlin said. “I intend to use my business experience to make some changes.”

On the accountability side of issues, Laughlin said that contractors and agents are not fully engaged and plugged into the situations they are dealing with.

“If you ask the department if they have accountability, they will say ‘yes,’” Laughlin said. “Their director or supervisor has to sign off, but they aren’t plugged into the system and don’t have to understand what those contracts are all about. That’s not accountability.”

Laughlin said that proper predictions were not being made in the state treasury department.

“I got a bill passed three years ago to do dynamic forecasting instead of static forecasting (in the state treasury department),” Laughlin said.

Dynamic forecasting would take into account issues such as the affects of rise and fall in gas prices, and how it affects oil wells, as well as monitoring economic trends and how they affect Oklahoma’s revenue.

“Dynamic forecasting takes all of these factors into consideration. Static forecasting just tries to guess how much revenue there’s going to be,” Laughlin said. “The treasurer’s office has never used a dynamic model and I think it’s time we used one.

“We can only spend up to 95 percent of the revenue, and if the forecast is too high, we tend to overspend.”

He said that the primary job of the treasury department is to invest the state’s money wisely, and that he would like to keep as much as possible invested in Oklahoma banks and businesses.

“I do think we should also avoid investing in foreign securities,” Laughlin said, “especially if those foreign securities are terrorist nations.

“It’s been an issue in other states, but I would never invest in countries of governments that were sympathetic to our enemies. There are some that pay very well in the Middle East, but a good turn on capital is no excuse to do that.”

Laughlin said that people are interested in the financial system right now, and that the timing to make changes to state finances is perfect.

“I think that in four years, we will see us, for sure, spending at least $100 million less a year on these issues,” Laughlin said. “Oklahoma is not poor, it’s just poorly managed. Oklahoma’s a great state, it’s got great people, and it deserves better management than they’ve been getting.”

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