TULSA (AP) Oklahoma's struggle to close a $1 billion-plus budget shortfall was the state's top news story of 2016, according to survey of Associated Press journalists and its media customers.
The ongoing struggle to address the frequency of earthquakes was picked second in the AP's Oklahoma's Top 10 stories.
Woes within the law enforcement community occupied three spots with the killing of an unarmed black man by a Tulsa police officer, fallout from last year's shooting of an unarmed man by a reserve sheriff's deputy and the sentencing of a former Oklahoma City officer convicted of raping women he met on his beat.
The entire list:
1. Oklahoma's economy tanks amid a downturn in oil prices.
2. Earthquakes shake the state with increasing regularity.
3. A former Chesapeake CEO dies the day after he is indicted on bid-rigging charges.
4. A white Tulsa police officer shoots and kills an unarmed black man.
5. Oklahoma reworks its execution protocol, and a grand jury says the governor's chief lawyer encouraged the use of a wrong drug in a 2015 execution.
6. A former reserve sheriff's deputy is convicted of killing an unarmed man in 2015.
7. Voters reject a pay raise for teachers; districts shorten their weeks and some teachers flee for neighboring states that pay better.
8. Kevin Durant leaves the Thunder, but Russell Westbrook signs a contract extension.
9. Oklahoma's Republicans maintain their stranglehold on the reins of state government.
10.A former Oklahoma City police officer is sentenced to 263 years in prison for rape and other charges.