The OTA reveals seventeen of their decades-old location authorizations in statute are infeasible
So why won't our legislators hear our bills to clean up the Turnpike Enabling Act?
Remember that email from the OTA’s Strategic Communications staffer I talked about in the Governor’s open record request post? Let’s talk a bit more about that.
As a reminder, Ms. Jessica Brown, former Strategic Communications point person for the OTA/ODOT, sent an email from her JLBrown@odot.org email to her jessicabrown1967@yahoo.com email and then forwarded that email to Ms. Kate Vesper (kate.vesper@gov.ok.gov) in the Governor’s office, which is how it ended up in my open record request.
The email listed all of the Oklahoma Turnpike routes authorized in state statute in Title 69, Section 1705(e) and color coded each of the thirty five authorizations as “yellow = turnpike or exit fully/partially built,” and “blue = turnpike not built/equivalent ODOT route.” The thirty-five separate authorizations were also annotated with explanations.
Oklahomans for Responsible Transportation took these thirty-five OTA annotated authorizations provided in the open record request email from July 27, 2022 and mapped them accordingly.
The map is a great way to visualize just how out-of-date the Turnpike Enabling Act is.
Everything shown in GREEN is an existing turnpike, which we labeled with the corresponding location authorization used in statute. Every location authorization (including turnpikes, interchanges and bridges) shown in BLUE has not been built and has been deemed infeasible by the OTA due to low traffic revenue projections or unnecessary because there is an equivalent ODOT route already in place. These authorizations should be removed from Title 69, Section 1705(e).
The YELLOW areas are contained in location authorization #10, which is the same location authorization in which the poorly performing 2-lane Chickasaw Turnpike is described.
This location authorization is a prime example of a poorly worded location authorization that should have never been approved as it describes THREE different locations in the state (see description below). In addition, part of #10 is duplicative of #14, which was deemed infeasible by the OTA because of an ODOT equivalent route SH7, that easily carries the low volume of the region. Another part of #10, described between Snyder and Woodward, is completely unnecessary due to low traffic volume and sufficient ODOT State Highways 183 and 283, which was noted by OTA. The third part describes an area headed northeast to cross I40 somewhere between SH48 and Henryetta, but this area is already adquately serviced by SH377, SH56, SH1, SH48 and SH75. This was also noted by the OTA. In otherwords, location authorization #10 should be removed from statute as there are no feasible tollroads contained within.
Not to mention that the Chickasaw is the poorest performing tollroad in the state, and has been since inception.
This particular turnpike was bundled together with three other urban turnpikes in the 1987 authorization debacle and the legislative intent (as proved by old newspaper articles and Governor Bellmon’s statements - see this post) was that they had to complete all four of these turnpikes at the same time, with one bond issue and indenture.
“[t]he 1987 Legislature approved building of four toll roads, including the Oklahoma City turnpike, but only if part or all of the four roads were built at the same time.”
To make the Turnpike Enabling Act as clear and unambiguous as possible, it is imperative that location authorizations be constrained to ONE specific area, meant to define ONE specific turnpike and be “described with appropriate specificity to allow citizens to make informed decisions, including the intended starting point, ending point and location.” (ORT Policy Statement)
The RED X’s are interchanges along existing turnpikes that have not been built and these particular locations will be discussed in detail in the next blog.
The following location authorization descriptions with color coding and annotations came directly from the July 27, 2022 Jessica Brown email. Color coding liberty was taken with Authorization #10 to try and show that this one authorization actually entailed three different locations.
It is validating to our efforts to have proof that the OTA agrees with us that the Turnpike Enabling Act location authorizations MUST be cleaned up. In fact, two years ago, ORT officially proposed a “sunset” clause through legislative reform that would invalidate any unbuilt location authorization that has been sitting in the statute for more than five years; but the legislators refuse to hear it.
Proposed ORT Legislative Reform Falls on Deaf Ears
In Fall 2022, the Oklahomans for Responsible Transportation (ORT) held two legislative interim studies with the Senate and House where we laid out specific areas within the existing Turnpike Enabling Act (Title 69) that required reform. We proposed common sense policies to create appropriate boundaries, ensure due diligence, require sound engineering policy and procedures and financial practices, and enable a toll free future.
Brag moment: Two of our specific policy statements have already come to fruition!
The roles of Secretary of Transportation, Executive Director of ODOT, and Executive Director of OTA must be three different persons to facilitate appropriate governance. (On Wednesday, February 28, 2024, the Oklahoma Attorney General (OAG) published an opinion that it is illegal for Secretary Tim Gatz to serve in three state “offices,” and he must resign or be removed from two “offices.”)
OTA Board membership should be appointed by the House and Senate, not just the Governor. (HB2263 split the appointment power of the OTA board between the House, Senate and Governor’s office and required all OTA board members to disclose financial conflicts of interest and became law on November 1, 2023).
Regarding location authorizations, within our policy statements we specifically noted that:
Each individual route in 69 O.S. § 1705(e)(1)-(35) must be retired and expressly reauthorized individually by the legislature (i.e., the sunset provision) and must be built by the Turnpike Authority (“OTA”) within 5 years of authorization.
After Representative Danny Sterling hosted our interim study, he agreed to run our “sunset bill,” HB2262 in the House and Senator Shane Jett agreed to run a mirror bill (SB 1079 (2023) and SB 1973(2024)) in the Senate.
Our legislation reform in these bills proposed the following language to Title 69, Section 1705(e):
“Legislative authorization for the construction of any turnpike project authorized prior to November 1, 2023, shall expire unless the Authority has commenced actual physical construction of such turnpike project in earnest within five (5) years of November 1, 2023. Legislative authorization for the construction of any turnpike project authorized on or after November 1, 2023, shall expire unless the Authority has commenced actual physical construction of such turnpike project in earnest within five (5) years after the effective date of such authorization. In any case where the Authority has commenced construction prior to the expiration of the authorization, construction shall diligently continue in due and regular course to the completion of the turnpike project. Nothing in this paragraph shall be deemed to preclude or prohibit the Legislature from reauthorizing an expired turnpike project authorization.”
Unfortunately, even though it is painfully obvious that the Turnpike Enabling Act is woefully out-of-date, with decades-old location authorizations that have been deemed infeasible and redundant by the OTA as per the July 27, 2022 email, the Transportation Committee Chairs in both the House and the Senate, refused to hear our bills in both the 2023 and 2024 sessions.
Do you think if we show them the email from the OTA specifically annotating SEVENTEEN locations that OTA won’t or can’t build that the legislators will meaningfully engage in representative democracy and agree to serve the people of Oklahoma by updating the Turnpike Enabling Act? The removal of location authorizations that are no longer relevant is the right thing to do.
What about the OTA provided annotated location authorizations are confusing? Does the map adequately portray what we want the legislators to do and what they should AGREE to do to bring Section 1705(e) of the Turnpike Enabling Act into compliance?
The citizens of Oklahoma deserve an easy to comprehend and up-to-date constitution and our legislation to sunset ancient, and OTA-defined infeasible, location authorizations is important, necessary and common sense policy reform. We hope the legislators will agree with us next session and hear our sunset bill.
Stay tuned. There is so much more to discuss!
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