Oklahoma Watch
Oklahoma Watch is a non-profit organization that produces in-depth and investigative journalism on important public-policy issues facing the state. Oklahoma Watch is non-partisan and strives to be balanced, fair, accurate and comprehensive. The reporting project collaborates on occasion with other news outlets. Topics of particular interest include poverty, education, health care, the young and the old, and the disadvantaged.
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Oklahomans facing medical-debt lawsuits could get some relief under a bill advanced by a House committee on Thursday. -
Oklahoma used state disaster response funds to pay for a 30-day deployment of National Guard troops to help with border security as part of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star. -
Opportunities for A.P. classes, which give students a leg up in college admissions, are lacking in rural high schools. A new law aims to address the divide. -
After a summer pause to expand outreach efforts to SoonerCare members, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority has resumed an unwinding process to pare an estimated 270,000 low-income Oklahomans who kept Medicaid coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. -
Prisoner advocates argue the deaths highlight a need for universal air conditioning within Oklahoma’s correctional system. -
Arguing that urban voters and wealthy out-of-state groups have too much power over initiative petitions, several Republican lawmakers have filed bills seeking to add new signature collection requirements or increase the vote threshold needed for an initiative to pass. -
Oklahoma Watch used data from the secretary of state’s office, which keeps track of statewide meeting notices, to determine the agencies, boards and commissions with the most canceled meetings in the past five years. -
Change is coming to a southeast Oklahoma private prison plagued with violence and staffing shortages, but advocates for corrections staff and prisoners say further efforts are needed to improve conditions. -
A study revealed how existing inequities in Oklahoma related to housing, employment and means of accessing government assistance programs exacerbated the challenges of resettling Afghans when they began arriving in September 2021. -
Seven years after voters approved a greater investment in mental health and substance abuse services for Oklahoma counties, the money finally is on the way. But advocates for criminal justice reform warn that wide swaths of the state are at a disadvantage, unable to provide proper mental health and substance abuse treatment.
