REAP

We had a little get together out at the Meers fire department last week to take a look at the brand new brush truck that the they just received, made possible in part by one of those programs that I feel may be one of the single most important funds in the state. You’ve heard me speak of it before and if you live in one of the small communities in my district or any other small town in Oklahoma, your community has probably benefitted at some point from REAP funding. REAP stands for Rural Economic Action Plan and many of my urban counterparts sometimes express their displeasure at state money going to help a small community with a water tower or an upgraded sewer line or any of a host of other worthy projects funded by REAP dollars.

REAP dollars come to small communities in the form of these small grants and one of the things I hear urban legislators whine about is they have the misguided perception that somehow tax dollars generated in large metro areas are, in some twisted way, subsidizing life in rural Oklahoma. I actually heard one metro Representative say “why should we do that, why should our money go to subsidize a way of life that does not benefit us?” Now, after I took a chill pill and decided not to pick up a chair and pull a championship wrestling move on him, I regained my composure and explained to the smog breathing pavement pounder that many of our people in small communities in the state of Oklahoma spend un-told dollars in urban areas. I’m not sure, unless we had everyone turn in their zip code every time they spent a dollar, that you could ever really track how much money goes through the registers in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Lawton, Norman or you name it. Granted there are a lot more people in a concentrated area in those large urban settings but there’s an uncounted very large group of consumers across the state that travel to those metro areas to shop, eat out, buy large appliances, cars, pickups, fuel, and the list goes on. Many times in very small communities there may be only a small healthcare facility and more times than not there may be nothing of the kind so you can add Dr. visits to that list, all of which add to the sales tax in those large metro areas.

Probably the best two examples that come to my mind are major state livestock shows and state basketball playoffs. Having spent thirteen years as an Ag teacher I can tell you first hand that when we load the trailers with animals and tack we also loaded kids and more often than not, mom and dad and sometimes two sets of grandparents joined the caravan to go to Oklahoma City or Tulsa for state wide livestock shows and fairs. Generally they spend several nights in motel rooms, eat at least three meals a day in restaurants and you know without me telling you what happens when ladies get near a mall or sometimes just a Target. Checkbooks fly open; credit cards are dug out of purses and somebody’s fixin’ to shop because they just don’t have a lot of that available in the small communities that they live in. Those items are willingly purchased and they pay the sales tax and their little home communities get zero benefit. REAP funds are one of the only mechanisms for any of the sales tax generated to ever make it back to those communities. So, in reality, the urban argument that they are subsidizing life in rural Oklahoma is actually pretty weak. The other thing that kind of sticks in my crawl when the argument surfaces and it almost always does is that somehow we don’t need rural Oklahoma. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can’t grow a whole lot of wheat in a back yard and you can’t run very many cattle in a city park but you sure can in these wide open spaces surrounding these small Oklahoma communities that receive the crumbs in the form of REAP money. We live where we live because somebody has to feed ya’ and we’re glad you like bread and beef and cotton for your clothes and those fancy tasseled loafers are usually made of leather. So, will I fight to keep REAP funding in tact? You bet your Lexus I will because I know where you got the money to put in that grant. You got it from me and my neighbors when we came to town.

If you would like to contact me at the Capitol, please do not hesitate to call 1-800-522-8502 or email me at donarmes@okhouse.gov

And here’s a little something to think about as you go down the road:
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men. ~Herman Melville