In Oklahoma, oil dominates the state's politics. It's the source of great fortune and great division, with vast wealth concentrated in the hands of foundations in the state's largest cities, Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The Tulsa billionaires include George Kaiser, whose wealth derives from The Kaiser Francis Oil Company and the Bank of Oklahoma, founded by his father. Today Kaiser largely focuses on philanthropic efforts through The George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) with assets in excess of $3 billion.
The foundation has a significant influence on Tulsa, a local college professor found. When he taught at Tulsa Community College, Michael Mason led a class in which his students dissected the impact of GKFF. What they found was that in all areas, the foundation's influence in Tulsa rivaled or exceeded the state government's. "No foundation has ever had so much power over an American city. … It's a precinct model of what's happening to the whole United States," Mason says.
In addition to the Kaiser family, the Schusterman and Zarrow families of Tulsa also derive their wealth from the oil industry. Just among the foundations started by these three families, there are hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually on services in Oklahoma ranging from education to health care to public parks that by many accounts outpace spending by state and city governments.
The state's budget has been diminishing since 1990, and since 2004, the state's top income tax rate has decreased from 6.5 percent to 5 percent. Since 2006, the state's general fund dollars as a share of personal income – the source of funding for education, parks, health care and other public services – has fallen 35 percent, placing the state in the top five for funding cuts nationally. While the general fund increased to $5.85 billion in 2018, it remains lower than funding levels in 2007.
"You can say Oklahoma has seen among the most significant disinvestment form public institutions in the nation," says David Blatt, executive director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute. "Philanthropy was called in to plug holes in the budget that have devastated the state's public schools and health care systems."
