Oklahoma Preparing to Say No to Sonics

I wonder if Oklahoma State Senator Jim Wilson is in Frank Chopp's "Five"?

Reported today in Oklahoma's Tahlequah Daily Press, State Senator Jim Wilson, Representitive Mike Brown and Representitive John Auffett, spoke last Friday on their "Legislative Focus", while speaking about a variety of other subjects at the Tahlequah High School library. Oklahoma has a tax deferral giving to businesses as an incentive to attact commerce to the state. All three state representives are preparing to say no to the Sonics. They have higher priorities at the state level.

The three also talked about the deal between the Seattle Supersonics and the state of Oklahoma to bring the team to Oklahoma City. A legislative panel last week approved a tax incentive package to “sweeten the deal” of getting the professional basketball team into Oklahoma, said Brown. Simply put, gives $60 million in tax-deferred credit to the team. Brown and Wilson said the deal isn’t helping most Oklahomans.
“It’s something I couldn’t support,” said Brown.
“This is a tax break for those who have millions of dollars,” said Wilson. “This is for 2,000 people in the whole state, and not all of them agree [they should be paying less taxes].”
And members of the Sonics team, since they won’t be residents of the state, won’t be paying their income taxes to Oklahoma, said Brown.
“We’re going to lock up on these people, we’re not going to stop the basketball team from coming,” he said.
But Brown said the next step will be to “take care of our people,” to focus on a sort of “urban verses rural fissure” in Oklahoma.
TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS — Reporting

Having an income tax in Oklahoma may not be the only reason to not become a resident, but it can't help.

I wonder what David Stern will think of this (but not say), anybody want to guess?