Friday, March 28th, President of Pike Off OTA, Amy Cerato and our friend Whitney Mullica with Pike Off, joined us to talk about the OTA’s new route for Norman and other items.
Amy was a joy to talk with! She has a Ph.D. in Geotechnical Engineering and teaches at OU. Truly, this woman is extremely knowledgeable and it was so obvious from our conversation. She also has a Substack and you should definitely check that out! Also, make sure you check out the full video of the interview on both our Rumble and YouTube channels.
During our chat, both Amy and Whitney talked about how frustrating this particular session of the legislature has been – not being able to find out when bills are getting scheduled, trying to find out when bills are being heard and even when Oversight Committee meetings are being held – something we’ve complained about. In fact, here is Amy saying what I’m sure every conservative is thinking right now – we need to give the People’s House back to THE PEOPLE.
We’ve talked quite a bit on this program about OTA and the real spirit of lawlessness they seem to embody. When we had OTA’s attorney, Richard LaBarthe on last December, he talked about how OTA doesn’t follow their own trust agreements and creates bonds before the others are paid off. It’s simply their way of doing business.
In that vein, Amy talked about how the OTA is planning to build a bridge over the South Canadian river without any kind of impact studies at all. Listen as Amy describes the situation:
How is OTA allowed to get away with these kinds of things? No one can be exactly sure, but there is a whole lot of money tied up in contractors and business developers and land developers and other economic development arms with these turnpike builds that it seems more about money than about people for certain. Certainly, it seems that the OTA has very little regard for the people who own the land they virtually steal to build their roads – roads not even needed.
Every Oklahoman needs to be very aware of what goes on with the OTA and how they operate. This all needs to be stopped. There is no reason for OTA when the Oklahoma Department of Transportation can build/repair any roads. OTA is more a jobs program than a necessity for Oklahomans and we need to make our representation at the Oklahoma State Capitol fully understand that.
Friday, January 31st, our guest on the podcast was Tassie Katherine Hirschfeld of PikeOffOTA, the group that is pushing back against the Oklahoma Transportation Authority and their continued need to displace Oklahoma residents for completely unneeded toll roads for which taxpayers pay multiple times.
The whole discussion was worthwhile and you can see that in full on our Rumble and YouTube channels, though you can find it with public comment on YouTube and on our Facebook page. Seeing the comments is almost as good as the discussion.
One of the most important parts of the interview I think, was when Tassie – who spent quite some time in Cuba doing her Ph.D. research – compared OTA with Cuba’s soviet-style central planning. This is important. America is a Republic in administration and a Democracy in action, wherein the people who make up the citizenry are able to interact with their government officials and – ideally – direct how they are governed. This is NOT how the OTA functions, however, Tassie makes that very clear.
Unfortunately, the problems with OTA are not simple. In the video below, Tassie describes last year’s court case against the OTA in which PikeOff accused them of not following the Oklahoma Open Meeting law. The District Judge agreed that the OTA was not being forthcoming with information and transparent about the ways in which they were doing business and told OTA to stop work on their ACCESS program, but OTA just chose not to and the Judge didn’t make them. Therefore, it was like nothing had ever happened – OTA wasn’t taken to court, PikeOff didn’t win a lawsuit and OTA just went right along as they had before. Where else does this happen in life? I wouldn’t imagine I would be able to get away with not following a judge’s ruling, but OTA did.
It’s going to be very important for EVERY Oklahoman (because this won’t stop and someday this could be YOUR home) to pay attention to legislation this year regarding OTA has REQUESTED. PikeOff has provided that information and I’ve pasted it in below. Please let your senator and representative BOTH know that you want to see these laws PASSED this year! Thanks so much to Amy Cerato of PikeOff, for the information!
OTA SPECIFIC
HB1188 – Title 69, Section 1707 – Abutting property owner rights along turnpikes, including compensation for damages, devaluation of property or at the request of the property owner, acquisition of property plus all relocation costs incurred by owner. (Rick West) **MIRROR BILL TO SB969
HB1781 – Title 69, Section 1914 (NEW LAW) – Restricting how and where the OTA can advertise. (Shaw)
HB1939 – Title 69, Section 1705 – Sunset location authorizations if the OTA has not commenced physical construction in earnest within five years. (Sterling)
HB2090 – Title 74, Section 213 – State Auditor and Inspector to perform a special audit providing a determination of the revenue required to repay the original cost of existing turnpikes, provide an assessment of risk within the agency, conduct a 15 year look back and 10 year projection of maintenance reserved fund balances, deposits, expenditures and explanation of cross pledging refinancing practices, provide explanation of gap between required reserve maintenance fund deposits and actual reserve maintenance funds, provide an explanation of financial impact of cost overruns on the driving forward program. (Menz)
HB2093 – Title 69, Section 1709 – Establishing a bond debt ceiling on the OTA. (Menz) **MIRROR BILL TO SB963
HB2097 – Title 69, Section 1711 – – NEW LAW – Requiring legislative approval via a joint resolution for toll increases. (Menz) **MIRROR BILL TO SB964
SB963 – Title 69, Section 1709 – Establishing a bond debt ceiling on the OTA. (Standridge) **MIRROR BILL TO HB2093
SB983 – Title 69, Section 1705 – Audit by the State Auditor and Inspector prior to Bond Sales. Auditor can request any information necessary for the determination of the feasibility and economic soundness of any turnpike projects or parts thereof listed in 1705(e) which are to be financed with revenue bonds. (Standridge)
SB966 – Title 69, Section 1703 – Creation of a Turnpike Legislative Oversight Board. OTA must annually provide a copy of its most recent annual report to the members of the Turnpike Legislative Oversight Board, in addition to any information requested by such body. (Standridge)
SB969 – Title 69, Section 1707 – Abutting property owner rights along turnpikes, including compensation for damages, devaluation of property or at the request of the property owner, acquisition of property plus all relocation costs incurred by owner. (Standridge) **MIRROR BILL TO HB1188
SB 964 – Title 69, Section 1711 – NEW LAW – Requiring legislative approval via a joint resolution for toll increases. (Standridge) **MIRROR BILL TO HB2097
Open Records Act
HB2095 – Title 51, Section 24A.5 – Requiring state agencies to reply to open record requests within 30 days.
ROPE Report LIVE for Friday, December 6th included our interview with Edmond attorney, Richard Lebarthe, who talked about his lawsuit against Edmond Public schools and a bit about his fight with the Oklahoma Transportation Authority.
Accordingly, Oklahomans for Responsible Transportation and Oklahomans for Transparency in Government request that the Council of Bond Oversight postpone any decision on the proposed OTA bond offering until a full feasibility study and compliance review can be completed by an outside third party. We also request that any future OTA bond offerings be postponed until the State Auditor completes the investigative audit ordered by the Attorney General.
Seriously? Both groups – through their attorney – were only asking for the Council to WAIT A MINUTE WHILE A FEW FACTORS WERE REVIEWED FIRST. Yet the Council voted unanimously to grant the bonds to the OTA. Wow.
Here’s what Richard says about the meeting:
Please, PLEASE, go the the Oklahomans For Responsible Transportation website and follow them on social media. Oklahomans MUST stop the OTA and the Good ‘Ole Boy system propping them up or we’ll get to the point where we can’t afford to travel in Oklahoma, period.
The other topic Michael and I covered with Richard on Friday was a recap of the lawsuit Richard filed for Michael and numerous other parents of Edmond Public Schools, arguing that they had discriminated against their children because of their vaccination status.
If you’ll remember, during the COVID YEARS (eye roll), schools could – and would – arbitrarily tell parents that their kids had to stay home if they ‘contact traced’ them and thought they were at risk of developing COVID. Edmond parents filed suit against EPS because they were discriminating against kids who hadn’t had the vaccine with their policy. So, if you were vaccinated, you were neither contact traced nor sent home, but if you hadn’t been vaccinated, you were contract traced and sent home for 10 days if EPS believed you had been near a COVID positive person within 10 days.
Thanks to Richard, Edmond parents prevailed against EPS in court – demonstrating that EPS’ policy WAS flawed and discriminatory. Hilariously, EPS literally put out a statement to the press after the ruling that they were disappointed with the decision, though the court essentially said what Richard says in his comments below – EPS essentially coerced parents to vaccinate their kids for them to go to school.
It’s a shame parents have to pay an attorney to sue their own schools, but many parents today are having to do just that.
This year, the OTA – which is attempting to build a turnpike extension through the city of Norman (and numerous other places) – presented the Norman City Council with a contract in which they would provide Norman a list of items for the turnpike right of way.
PikeOffOTA researched the contract and found that no town with which OTA had signed a contract previously, came out getting what they expected. All, instead, were forced to pay for road repairs and other infrastructure issues created by OTA activity for which they hadn’t budgeted.
Kelly, Whitney and the group took their research to the Norman City Council, who, after a listening session, decided against signing the OTA contract – something that hasn’t happened previously.
After discussing this win, Kelly and Whitney showed more of their research on the OTA, which, as it turns out, is simply a glorified, Roosevelt-style works program for favored individuals and companies. Whitney and Kelly explain this thesis, below.
It’s maddening, but tolls don’t go back to simply repairing the roads, they are used as collateral for FURTHER BUILDING. Why does Oklahoma need so many toll roads? To keep paychecks rolling in – and not for the taxpayer.
For example, David Streb, President of POE Associates, has donated $15 thousand dollars to the PAC, $5,000 each year from ’22, ’23, and ’24. The Hilliary’s of Hilliary Communications in Lawton – of which both Dustin and Edward have been appointed by Governor Stitt to the Regents for Higher Education and the State Board of Career And Technology Education, have donated a total of $50,000 over the course of 2020 to 2024. To name just a few examples.
This cronyism at the taxpayer’s expense must stop, but the only way this will happen is if this information is shared widely and people decide they don’t want to fund the bank accounts of OTHERS with their tax dollars and stand up against OTA in their cities and towns and work to have legislators dissolve the agency and return toll roads back to the citizens.
NORMAN TIF
At the end of the program, Kelly introduced Dr. Rogers – a professor of economics at OU – who explained what a TIF is, why it works and who is benefiting from the TIF.
This is yet another example of crony capitalism and economic development WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. She explains here.
As Dr. Rogers so eloquently explains, a TIF is a way for a project to garner funds that excludes the direct will of the people over how they intend for their tax dollars to be spent.
While it is true that the City Council has to pass the TIFF and the City Council is an elected body, meaning that their voice is SUPPOSED to be directly tied to that of their citizens, as it often happens, developers and others involved in the TIFF have the time and money to skew the opinion of Council members while the citizens may not even understand the ramifications of the issue at hand.
Raising the tax rate of any city or town must be done by a vote of the people. In the case of a TIFF, taxes aren’t raised, but diverted, leaving the people with no direct say on this type of financing at the ballot box. In the case of the Norman TIFF, OU – the benefactor of the TIFF – paid 65 OU students to be at the Norman City Council meeting where the vote was taken – making it seem as though the TIF had more community support than it did. Dr. Rogers argues that the community doesn’t want the TIF and the only way to determine that, is through an initiative petition to recall the vote and institute a public vote on the matter, an effort currently underway in the City of Norman.
Dr. Rogers doesn’t say that she doesn’t believe the Norman arena project should be undertaken at all, but that there were no alternative ways to fund the project explored before the TIF was voted into place. By circumventing the will of the people in the matter of how their tax dollars are spent in their community, the people lose control of their government and are stymied in their ability to control their fates. In a Republic this is wrong.
To find the full live video please see our YouTube and Rumble channels.
Friday, August 24th, Michael and I had Kelly Wilson and Whitney Mullica, our friends from PikeOffOTA (aka Oklahomans For Responsible Transportation) on ROPE Report LIVE to talk about a very important Norman City Council meeting.
If you’ll remember, the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority has made plans to create a south extension of turnpike to ostensibly halt I-35 congestion and provide another route over the Canadian River. These plans are in conjunction with the OTA’s “Access” program, which is billed as “all about motorist safety”. But then it would be really hard to say something like, “the OTA’s Access program is all about allowing developers and construction companies to make money by accessing private property though the practice of eminent domain in order to keep the ‘I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine’ way of doing business intact in Oklahoma”, which is what it’s always looked like to me – and which there’s some evidence to suggest is at least partially correct.
Friday, Kelly and Whitney showed us all why it’s SUPER IMPORTANT for people to attend the Norman City Council meeting on Tuesday, August 27th (that’s also RUN OFF election day!), where they will be deciding whether or not to sign an agreement with OTA for several considerations explained in the video.
Interestingly, Kelly makes the case that when Oklahoma County signed a similar document with OTA over the Kickapoo Spur, Oklahoma County didn’t come out on the winning end of that deal.
Below is the interview with Kelly and Whitney in its entirety. It’s about an hour, but Kelly’s explanation is SUPER EASY to understand and the time will go by quickly. Please watch and then pass it on to ANYONE you know in the Norman area.
If you’d like to share just the video, you can find it on our YouTube channel HERE.
The City Council needs to VOTE NO on any agreement with the OTA in order to best allow members to do their job of representing the needs of the people of Norman. This video explains exactly the reason why.
Yes, I’m a registered Republican. No, I’m not changing the title of this blog. Unfortunately, we now live in UPSIDE DOWN WORLD. Maddeningly, our Republican Governor – Kevin Stitt – and the Republican SUPERMAJORITY Oklahoma legislature, is going Big Business for $1000 Alec.
Oklahoma, once considered to be the reddest state in the 50, is now Tyrannyville thanks to the economic development mantra of the group that used to be for ‘the people’; the property owners, those who had worked hard for a living and wanted to protect their investment/s – the Republicans. Nope, not any more.
Friday, May 24th, ROPE Report hosted Whitney Mullica and Kelly Wilson of PikeOffOTA (Citizens For Responsible Transportation) to talk about how the Oklahoma Transportation Authority – the pseudogovernmental agency peopled with unelected bureaucrats unaccountable to the public – work with members of the business development community to develop tolled roads that, not only must the citizens of Oklahoma pay to use, but that removes their property from them using the force of the state.
You can find the full video on our Rumble and YouTube channels. I suggest you watch the whole thing – it is very informative when hearing all the information at once – but until you have the time, watch the very short pieces I’ve clipped from the whole, below.
Though many people do eventually cut a deal with the OTA for the ‘sale’ of their house and property to the Authority, many people refuse. It doesn’t matter, however, because the state kicks them off the property anyway only to wait – in some cases – over A YEAR to have the issue settled by the court. This is OUTRAGEOUS and citizens of Oklahoma simply shouldn’t tolerate this kind of nonsense.
Here, Kelly shows that, while eminent domain is used to remove property owners from their property, the ‘surplus’ land ‘left over’ after the turnpike has been created, is then sold to the public. Many times, the purchasers of the land are people who benefitted in some way through the OTA turnpike process in the first place. While this is not illegal, personally benefitting from the process of removing the property of a citizen using the force of the state is ethically and morally wrong. If people can’t police themselves along moral and ethical lines, why is the state not protecting citizens by preventing this kind of behavior?
Could it be that ‘the state’ would rather have the money afforded it by the rich and powerful – especially when it comes time to be re-elected?
Below is the most important video you’ll see if you really want to know the way citizens are being tyrannized by Oklahoma’s governmental bureaucracy because this video connects all the dots. Suffice it to say, ‘the people’ simply don’t matter in the face of business interests that want to enrich themselves.
Here, Kelly provides THE CIRCLE OF GOVERNMENT INTERESTS – the ways in which the rich just keep getting richer off the backs of those whose property is seized by eminent domain to create roads they’ll be forced to pay to use. Rinse and repeat. It’s like shampooing your hair.
Who’s going to protect the citizen now when all the people whose job it is to PROTECT THE RIGHTS AND PROPERTY OF THE CITIZEN are essentially in on the deal to benefit from government contracts and government planning and government’s support of private business and public/private partnerships…..
We’ll never get our liberty back until we figure out a way to get a tire iron in this wagon wheel right here!
So…PLEASE SHARE WIDELY!! Help us educate all Oklahomans about what’s happening right under their feet!
