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    • Chapter 9: Supreme Ridiculousness, The Original Antigenic Sin, Harm to the Naturally Immune, Omicron and Immunological Responses
    • Chapter 10: Vaccine narratives and continued linguistic evolution: leadership, conflicting data and lipid nanoparticles
    • Chapter 11: The Most Dangerous Vaccine Dethroned: Adverse Event Secrecy, Reporting Systems, Underreporting Factors, Batch Lookup, and Excess Mortality
    • Chapter 12: Undue Risk, Specific Adverse Events, and Autopsy’s after Covid-19 Inoculations
    • Chapter 13: Numerical Trickery, Vaccine Efficacy, Variants and Unnatural Viral Trends
    • Chapter 14: Conclusion: We The People Determine The Ending

Special Reports

The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority: The Biggest Bully on the Block (Part 2)

May 13, 2022

Part 2 – The REAL Cost of OTA’s Turnpike Expansion

SPECIAL REPORT

In Part 1 of this Special Report, we uncovered the truth history of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority and exposed how they have been able to hijack progress and private property in Oklahoma with impunity since they began.

The response from you, our readers, as well as several Norman-area legislators was overwhelming. It appears as though no other news organization had taken the time to actually explain how the OTA got its vice-like grip over this state. We are humbled at the reception Part 1 received, and hope you will find Part 2 just as informative.

A News 9 story on April 14th detailed a meeting that Access Oklahoma had with the House Transportation Committee, in light of the uproar from Norman citizens following the announcement of the Turnpike expansion through eastern Norman. In that meeting, Jordan Perdue from OTA stated when questioned as to the number of homes that would be impacted,  “We do not have that number right now.”

His response prompted Rep. Mike Dobrinski (R-Okeene) to ask, “How is that information not part of the equation?”

Since OTA has yet to be able to provide the public with any real answers about the total impact of their expansion project, we took the liberty of doing the research for them. In this article, we will detail the projected impact of the proposed new tollroads, broken down by the four main sections of the project:

  • I-40 to Indian Hills Interchange
  • Indian Hills Interchange to Hwy 9
  • Hwy 9 to I-35
  • East-West Corridor from Indian Hills Interchange to I-44

I-40 to Indian Hills Interchange

These numbers are only estimates as the final route has yet to be determined by the OTA. However, as mentioned by OTA representatives at a recent public meeting in Norman, the routes are “pretty much set in stone.” The total number of affected properties in this stretch of the project alone are 1,862. They are broken down by type of property affected, and whether the property will be seized or depreciated below.

The impacted properties that would be condemned (seized) are as follows:

  • Houses lost – 149
  • Other Large Structures lost (Barns/Garages/Shops) – 160
  • Parcels not owned by ODOT – 191

The additional impacted properties which would face economic impacts include:

  • Houses depreciated due to proximity to freeway – 765
  • Other large structures depreciated due to proximity – 597

Total impacted properties:

  • Houses/land either seized or depreciated in value: 1,105
  • Other structures either lost or depreciated in value: 757

Indian Hills Interchange to Hwy 9

According to the “proposed” routes, the total number of affected private properties are 370. This is not including public lands affected that are not owned by ODOT. They are as follows:

  • Houses seized: 120
  • Other large structures seized: 104
  • Private parcels not owned by ODOT: 145
  • Cemeteries: 1
  • State Park: 1
  • Reserved School Land – 1

The property within 1/2 mile of the proposed route that would be negatively affected through depreciation are as follows:

  • Homes: 292
  • Other large structures: 279

The particularly shocking aspects of this portion of the project are the removal of a cemetery, and the plowing through of a federally protected wildlife refuge. When Ignite Liberty spoke with Amy Cerato, one of the affected residents, she mentioned that her discussions with the Federal Bureau of Reclamation (the agency responsible for the protected land around Lake Thunderbird) revealed that OTA had not even notified the Federal government of their intentions to plow through the wildlife preserve.

Ignite Liberty has reached out to the Bureau of Reclamation for comment on this portion of the project. As of publication time we have not received a response. We will update this article should we receive a response.

Hwy 9 to I-35

The stretch of the project from Hwy 9 south to I-35 would affect 1,223 pieces of property, broken down as follows:

  • Houses seized: 182
  • Other large structures seized: 144
  • Private parcels seized: 205

Additionally affected properties within 1/2 mile of proposed route:

  • Houses depreciated: 437
  • Other large structures: 255

Total number 0f affected properties:

  • Houses depreciated or seized: 619
  • Other large structures depreciated or seized: 399
  • Private parcels seized: 205

East-West Corridor from Indian Hills Interchange to I-44

The total number of affected properties by the proposed east-west section of the turnpike are 282. They are broken down as follows:

  • Homes seized: 82
  • Homes and/or property within 1/4 (depreciated): 200

 

The Total Numbers

All toll, the total number of seized property for the entire project is 1,482, broken down as follows:

  • Homes: 533
  • Other large structures: 408
  • Private parcels: 541

The total number of depreciated properties are

  • Homes: 1,694
  • Other large structures: 1,331

John Kilpatrick Turnpike Expansion

Lost in the uproar over the proposed expansion in Norman was the fact that an expansion of the John Kilpatrick Turnpike was also authorized during the same board meeting that authorized the Norman projects.

Residents along the JKT corridor discovered this the hard way as the OTA sent out certified letters to all of the property owners whose property backs up to the JKT ROW this past Saturday – the day before Mother’s Day. The letter was provided to Ignite Liberty by concerned homeowners:

The letter set off a firestorm of concerned homeowners, fearful that their property would be next in line for seizure. Several homeowners spoke with Ignite Liberty out of concern. According to the attorneys they talked to, there was no legal recourse whatsoever to stop the OTA from taking their property since the turnpike was already in existence.

According to one of the homeowners, when they called and spoke with OTA’s corridor manager for the JKT project, they were informed that the letters had somewhat been sent in error, as not all homes along the turnpike were at risk for seizure.

The JKT expansion involves two different sections. The western section shown in the map below involves both widening the turnpike from 2 lanes to 3 (in blue) and adding access points (in yellow).

The eastern portion of the project, shown in the map below, mainly involves expanding the inside lanes only, and conducting sound studies to determine if a sound wall is needed in order to keep the project within legal limits for sound pollution. According to the homeowner who spoke with the OTA, there are no plans to seize property along this section of the JKT since the space for the new lanes already exists in the median.

In a voicemail provided to Ignite Liberty from the homeowners, the corridor manager apologized for having sent identical letters to all affected homeowners and stated that revised letters would be sent out this week detailing which homes would be at risk of seizure and which homes were in the clear.

While it is understandable that errors in judgment could be made, it is rather surprising that more care wasn’t given in order to avoid unnecessary uproar…especially considering the controversy surrounding the Norman project.

It is unknown as of yet how many homes will be affected for the JKT expansion. We are working to determine that number and will update this report once we have the final numbers. Regardless of the impact, the homeowners that will be affected have no legal recourse to keep their property because of the eminent domain authority given to OTA by the legislature 54 years ago.

If something isn’t done by either the legislature or through the initiative process to either arrest or impede OTA’s ability to use eminent domain, no homeowner in their path will be able to rest easy.

Filed Under: Oklahoma Turnpike Authority - The Biggest Bully on the Block, Special Reports

Oklahoma’s 2020 Election: Adding Up The Numbers

April 25, 2022

– by Ryan Hill, Oklahoma Liberty and Integrity Group

After the 2020 election I had many questions that would not be answered by the major media outlets. Lots of us asked questions, but officials gave dismissive explanations or refused to consider what was put before them.

Nevertheless the public persisted, and throughout that November and December a few states held hearings, some of which I watched or listened to from start to finish. Testimonies from one state to another shared many similarities, giving me insight into how massive numbers of votes could be swung nationwide using a variety of methods.

Recall the challenges in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and to a lesser extent in Nevada, Minnesota, even Virginia. There are probably others. Witnesses testified to seeing things like sequential absentee ballots that should have been in a random order from mailing, poll workers and watchers not being allowed to observe the count, specifically Republican observers being treated more harshly, such as over COVID protocols in place at the time, and more.

With how widespread this appeared to be, I wanted to find out what was going on in my own state. Although Oklahoma is considered a “solid red” state, across the nation once-safe Republican territories may be up for grabs in the near future, like Georgia was in 2020, sending its electors to a Democrat for the first time since 1992. States like Texas, considered red since 1980, are seeing shifts in voting, too.

So I decided to use my background in IT analytics, where I’ve worked with many large number sets, to break down the results from Nov 3. While I’d hoped to find nothing of interest, it’s become clear to me we have many of the same issues with elections as other states. And in order to properly address them – to have clean elections – people must know about them.

Getting Into The Numbers

Before going over the specific points, first let’s understand how our elections happen in Oklahoma. We do use paper ballots – we also use machines. We utilize 2 forms of “absentee” or early voting: mail in, and early in-person. Absentee ballots must be requested, and only up until the 3rd Monday before an election. They must be returned to the county election office by the voter, with very few exceptions, either in the mail by the end of the day of an election, or returned by hand until the day before. On Election Day, the absentee ballots are opened and tabulated. They are the first numbers reported after close of polls, at the same time as early in-person voting, followed by day-of votes from individual precincts, reported in batches.

With that in mind, here are the main problems I’ve found with the NUMBERS in Oklahoma’s 2020 election:

  • Results curve is way too smooth, shows no scatter and appears computer-simulated
  • Mail in performance ratio unnaturally favors Democrats – a county average of 26%
  • High level of uniformity down-ticket & beyond partisan races
  • Odd passage of unpopular questions or proposals

In addition, there are reports of procedural violations, and changes made to accommodate COVID practices that all add up to one thing: WE NEED AN AUDIT. Now let’s go into each class of problem, to see why the assurances that everything is OK aren’t settling the matter.

The Curve

In any election analysis, you want to break down the final results into demographics to better understand where the vote came from. A winning candidate might do this to learn where their support base lives. A losing candidate may want to know where they need to boost performance to run again. In our case, we want to see if there are any anomalies in the data, or any indicators that something is amiss.

A county-level view of the state can be obtained from reports provided by the Oklahoma State Election Board, showing county and precinct vote totals for each candidate and every race.

By sorting this data for November 2020, a smooth curve is formed for either presidential candidate, from the county with the highest percentage (or ratio) of votes to the least. Because the contest was essentially between Biden and Trump their curves are nearly mirror images of each other. Shown here is Trump’s vote ratio:

Source: https://results.okelections.us/OKER/?elecDate=20201103
Above 100% means Trump won a county.

Notice a few features of this curve. The reddest counties are toward the left, and bluest or most purple to the right. The curve itself is very smooth, and the generated polynomial line (in red) on top of it closely matches the actual ratio in each county. Only toward the left & right edges does it start to vary somewhat. Then see how the slope of the curve is steeper on the ends, as well. I wrote in more detail about this on my website.

So what does it mean? If you plot the results from any election, wouldn’t there be a curve? Yes, of course some curve would be formed, but how would it look? Would it be able to “hug” a mathematical expression so closely, or would there be more variation?

Here are a few fictitious examples to show how the results curve could appear differently:

If an election is polarized, you might see very few counties in the middle range (top graph), or theoretically, results might stack up evenly across the counties (middle), or candidates might have a sort of vote ceiling and never exceed it (bottom). More possibilities exist, and as time goes on I hope to be able to provide historical election examples that will supplement this point.

Now look at how the national 50-state + DC curve formed for the same 2020 election, as uncovered by Draza Smith, side-by-side with ours.

What are the chances they would look this similar?

The Ratio

While entering the individual county vote numbers for Trump and Biden, I also added in the other candidates for President, plus the statewide Senate races and state questions, along with each county’s House districts. This way I could compare multiple simultaneous contests with roughly the same number of voters each. (Exceptions being the House races.)

As I worked through the first dozen counties, it became painfully obvious there was a strong tendency for mail in votes to favor Biden and other Democrats. Proportional to their overall percentage, that is. So in “County A” Trump might have won the contest on Election Day 55-45%, yet with mail ins it would be 50-50, or even 45-55% (meaning in Biden’s favor).

When all our 77 counties are combined, each and every one of them swung towards the Democrat side of the ticket. Cleveland County went 29.68% in their favor, Oklahoma was 24.03%, Tulsa 30.48%, and Logan 30.64%, just to name a few. Even Cimarron County, with one of the lowest differences, comes in at 7.7%. Looking at the table, I was perplexed to find how unbelievably close the numbers were in the middle of the range – often within 0.1% of each other and sometimes .01% from one county to the next.

Left column represents Biden’s Mail in % vs Trump, subtracted by his Election Day %. Right column indicates the same for Trump. 3rd party and independent candidate vote percentages varied little county-to-county, and did not significantly affect the overall outcome.

Wendi, my colleague with Oklahoma Liberty & Integrity, and I reviewed this in table format, then I added the graph, and with our eyes wide we saw yet another smooth curve.

Ironically, I hadn’t worked on the total vote ratio curve yet, otherwise I might have been even more aghast. But this was the first visual confirmation to me of what many people have suspected – something strange is going on with our mail in voting.

It can’t be repeated enough that if a natural, organic voter turnout resulted in one party or candidate doing better in a mail campaign, you would expect to see that turnout concentrated to the areas where that candidate or party spent the most effort. On the flip side, we should also see counties where their opponent does well, or better, such as in areas where there was less effort or the opponent targeted different places for a mail campaign.

Instead, we see that across all 77 counties, Joe Biden outperformed Trump at mail in votes, relative to both of their election day performance. Again, this doesn’t mean Biden “won” the county on Election Day or with mail ins. He won some if you only include the mail, and Trump won every county with only Election Day votes, as well as overall. My comparison just means Biden and other Democrats did better on the mail in side, by the percent shown in the graph above. This averages out to 26.01%.

You could convince me a campaign got 5 or 10% better on average, maybe 20% in a county or two. But 26% across one of the reddest states in the United States, where both houses and our governorship are controlled by Republicans, as well as all current US Representatives and Senators? Where do all these votes come from? Regardless of the answer, it’s happening against a headwind of voter registration trends like Keshel and probably others have related.

Now with everything you’ve seen, and to drill in the point that the “opponent” candidate should outperform in at least some counties with mail in votes, here is the same presidential divergence graph, but this time including 2016 overlaid with 2020.

Note the counties are in different orders, reflecting each election’s turnout, which is why they are numbered rather than named.
2016 data source: https://results.okelections.us/OKER/?elecDate=20161108

In 2016, there were 7 counties Trump exceeded Clinton’s performance in mail in voting. This proves it can happen, and has happened. Further, how did two elections, separated by 4 years, with two different Democrat candidates on the ticket, wind up with nearly the same performance curve each time? Could this possibly be from organic turnout, in a world where campaigns hope for sunny weather and that people remember to vote?

The Uniform Ticket

While exploring down-ticket races I started to notice the number of votes for certain candidates were very close in many counties. For example, a lot of people vote straight party ticket. Yet not everyone, and not every contest is a partisan one. There are also state questions, judges, and other elections of a non-partisan nature that can’t be chosen by selecting a party ticket. Additionally, some people only vote “top-of-ticket” and leave the rest of, or portions of their ballot blank. Only the votes that are cast count – or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Let me give you an example from Osage County with the Presidential contest, plus the Senate, US Congress district 3, and a state question.

On the one side of this ticket, candidates vote totals are within 7% of each other. But on the other side of the ticket, the numbers are far less uniform. It’s over 13% in Osage County, and commonly ranging upwards of 20 to 30% across the state.

This only happened in the absentee mail in vote. The early in-person vote (a form of absentee according to Oklahoma statue), and Election Day vote have higher variance. The mail votes appear almost to have been copies of each other.

Including a state question or other non-partisan race added the element of ballots that went beyond party ticket selection. Like I stated above, Oklahomans can select straight party voting, but this won’t include state questions, municipal questions, judicial retentions, or certain other non-partisan races.

Our largest counties hold more offices, and in the case of 2020 also more items on the ballot. In Oklahoma County the Democrat-side mail in ticket had a variance of 22.6%, while the Republican side varied by 71.9%. In Tulsa County it was 18.9% and 49.7%. Tulsa’s variance overall, including mail and in person votes, was 49.7% and 54.7%, which the higher levels of variance seen – and expected – elsewhere.

Now let me ask this ridiculous question: do people who vote by mail all get together on a conference call and decide how to vote? Is there a secret menu on my neighborhood app I don’t know about? Or is this yet another cause for concern in our deep red state which we all love and hope has honest elections?

In case anyone thinks the concern is unwarranted, take a listen to how analysis in Arizona uncovered 17,000 or more duplicate signatures in part of their legislative audit of Maricopa County. The questions are valid, and shared by many citizens.

The Outliers

Looking past the previous points, some of the individual results of this election are equally perplexing.

Let’s start with SQ 805, which deserves to have its own discussion at length. 805 was a proposal to remove prior felony convictions from Judges’ consideration when sentencing, and to modify existing sentences to conform with the new limits if it passed. It confused some voters, failing overall at only 39% in the grand total, and was horribly unpopular at the ballot box on the day of the election. Yet it was a vote-by-mail rockstar, joining the Democrat candidates in its enjoyment of a mail in vote boost all across the state. Without commenting as to the question’s merit, it clearly drew bipartisan opposition, except in the mail.

All nine of Oklahoma City’s municipal questions passed handsomely, despite being added to the ballot at the last minute and stuffed into an already-full presidential cycle. They fall within the county’s 22.6% presidential mail in divergence figure that favored the Democrat ticket, and even on election day received unquenchable support. The lowest passing percent was 62, and highest was 79.

The same uniformity in not-partisan races can be observed in Tulsa County’s results for all district Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals, and Court of Civil Appeals retention races. It’s as if voters are blindly checking the “Yes” box. But once more this can’t be the case, because in the same county where nine court retentions AND SQ 805 had 34-41k “Yes” votes (by mail) apiece, SQ814 only had 28,214 in favor, and 30,146 against. Of the just-mentioned contests, SQ814 was the only one not to see a mail-in majority in Tulsa County.

Another odd feature in the data from 2020 is found in races with Independent candidates. For some reason, they seem to be immune from the mail in uniformity. In Cleveland County, for one, the Sheriff’s race was between a Republican and an Independent, Amason vs. Owings. While Biden and SQ805 pulled in more than 20,000 votes each, with Abby Broyles and Mary Brannon not far behind at 19,747 and 17,870 respectively, Owings (I) only brought in 11,257 mail votes.

If you combine all mail votes for each race in Cleveland County, the Sheriff’s race has more than 8,000 fewer votes than the Presidential. A dropoff is to be expected, but even still, SQ805 wound up with around 3,200 more votes than the Sheriff’s race. Contrast this to other counties with Sheriff’s races, like neighboring Oklahoma County to the north, where a Republican ran against a Democrat, and they actually saw more mail in votes than Trump and Biden!

The Independent candidate trend shows up elsewhere, too, such as in smaller Adair County, where the Independent won and even overshot all the other races in terms of mail in votes.

Other Reports

Everything covered here has to do with numbers and data alone, coupled with my knowledge as a resident in Oklahoma. When shown in context and properly understood, it should be clear to just about any honest citizen that we need a serious examination of our elections system.

Despite being repeatedly told by our State Election Board that no electronic interference was seen, nothing is connected to the internet, and there’s nothing to worry about, a good number of us are quite concerned.

By talking to members of the public for the last year about this topic, some of the stories I’ve heard would make you think we live in Arizona or Pennsylvania ourselves. Next I’ll cover these other reports, showing how they add to the puzzle. And Wendi will show some connections between entities here at home and big-time funders of political upheaval.

Filed Under: Oklahoma's 2020 Election

SPECIAL REPORT: Bob Linn – Friend of Liberty, or Enemy of Truth? Part 2: The Epic Connection

April 20, 2022

SPECIAL REPORT

In our article published last night, we delved into possible motivations behind OCPAC President Bob Linn’s attack on State Auditor & Inspector (SAI) Cindy Byrd…that his ranting over his Open Records Request (ORR) for files from the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) audit performed by the SAI prior to Byrd taking office is likely a ruse for his real motivation: to discredit the SAI in hopes of casting doubt on the veracity of the office’s audit of Epic Youth Services (EYS) and Epic Charter Schools (ECS).

As of publication time this morning, Linn has yet to issue a response.

In this article we will examine whether the SAI investigative audit of Epic was justified, and whether SAI Byrd was accurate in her assessment that EYS represented the “the largest example of public fraud in the history of the State.”

As we mentioned yesterday, while reading this we ask you to ponder this question:

“Did Bob Linn know about all of this…and if so, why did he try so hard to defend the actions of Epic Youth Services?”

Before we get started, it would be helpful to your understanding if we first gave some background on the purpose of the Office of State Auditor & Inspector so as to understand the role they play in ensuring the taxpayer’s money is being spent properly…in particular the type of investigative audits like Governor Stitt ordered of Epic.

The Purpose of Audits

The purpose of state audits is to examine a body of evidence to determine if established procedures, laws, and regulations governing state agencies has been followed; and if not, to make certain recommendations to ensure compliance with those regulations going forward.

When the SAI is asked to conduct an investigative audit by the Governor, it is done to determine whether there is sufficient evidence of potentially criminal wrongdoing to warrant the State’s criminal investigation agencies (OSBI, Attorney General, etc.) conducting investigations of their own.

As SAI Cindy Byrd mentioned last night in her presentation to a meeting of OK2A (Oklahoma Second Amendment Association), the auditor’s office does not regularly audit public schools. They only do so when requested by the Governor.

This was the case with the investigative audit of Epic Charter Schools (ECS) and Epic Youth Services (EYS). EYS was the for-profit Education Management Organization (EMO) for ECS until the new board of ECS terminated their contract following the OSBI investigation.

With that in mind, what follow is a summary of the EYS scandal that resulted in the OSBI investigation that has since been turned over to the Attorney General’s Office, who recently turned it over to the Oklahoma County DA’s office.

The information below is taken directly from the audit performed by the SAI at the request of Governor Stitt. The entirety of the SAI’s Epic audit is available here:

Epic Charter Schools Investigative Audit – Part One

Before we get to the Epic scandal, however, it is important to understand the background of its founders, Ben Harris and David Chaney, and what education management organizations (EMO) are designed to do.

Education Management Organizations – Corruption or Capitalism?

EMOs are for-profit companies that charter schools contract with for services necessary to perform their mission, such as financial, legal, IT, curriculum, and other various program needs. EMOs are not, in and of themselves, corrupt.

However, as is the case any time private businesses contract with state agencies, they come under more intense scrutiny simply because the money changing hands is not private money…it’s taxpayers money that the state agencies are tasked with using properly.

Harris and Chaney had significant experience in helping other entities to start charter schools through their work for an EMO. According to a September 5th, 2010 article in The Tulsa World, “Harris, 35, is an expert on virtual charter schools. He worked on the applications of a dozen schools in Florida, California and Arizona for Bricktown-based company Advanced Academics Inc.”

During their work with Advanced Academics, they would help establish charter schools and in return the charter schools would contract to spend a percentage of their state-appropriated funds to hire Advanced Academics as the school’s EMO to help manage the school and provide technology resources.

Harris’ wife, Elizabeth VanAcker, sat on one of the non-profit organizations based out of Florida that applied for no less than 7 charter school applications for virtual charter schools to the State of Florida. Each of those applications for charter proposed contracting exclusively with Advanced Academics to be their EMO.

In 2003, both Harris and Chaney obtained jobs with the Florida Department of Children and Families, with Harris rising to become the agency’s Deputy Secretary. According to the Tulsa World article, Harris’ time with the agency was fraught with scandal:

In July 2004, a whistle-blower investigation revealed that Harris had accepted trips, dinners and other favors from companies looking to contract with the social services agency.”

While no charges were ever filed following an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, that investigation did find that, “both Harris and Chaney were involved in a number of questionable contracts awarded to vendors that appeared to circumvent the state’s bidding process.”

One of Harris’ contacts for one of the questionable contracts was none other than his wife, VanAcker, who worked for both Florida State University’s Institute of Health and Human Services, and a company called Edmetrics…who created Epic Charter School’s initial website for Community Strategies, Inc. – the non-profit organization created by Harris and Chaney that started Epic Charter Schools.

It should be noted at this point that EMOs have come under immense scrutiny nationwide, to include criminal investigations, for mismanagement and embezzlement of public funds intended for the charter schools that end up funding for-profit organizations*.

*For an extensive report on some of those investigations, read Chartered-for-Profit, published by the Network for Public Education.

The Epic Youth Services Scandal

In 2005, Harris and Chaney founded Community Strategies, Inc., a non-profit organization. While they never sat on the board of directors, they did fill all 5 board members seats with their close personal friends. In the same year, the duo also founded Epic Youth Services, another Oklahoma-based EMO similar to Advanced Academics.

Six years later in 2011, Community Strategies, Inc., with Harris still listed as the non-profit’s registered agent, applied for and received a charter from the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board to start Epic 1-on-1 Charter Schools (ECS). The operating agreement of Community Strategies, Inc – now the governing board for Epic Charter School – mandated that ECS hire EYS as the schools EMO…a company fully owned by Harris and Chaney.

While one could certainly call the nature of the relationship suspect at best, and downright unethical at worst, it didn’t necessarily violate any existing state laws. At the time, virtual charter schools were very much a “Wild West” type of environment, not too dissimilar from the MMJ environment, where the industry was outpacing the regulatory body’s ability to govern it.

The problems with the relationship between ECS and EYS came in the nature of the contract between them.

As mentioned in the SAI audit, the contract had three troubling aspects to it. First, the contract called for ECS to pay EYS a yearly fee of 10% of the “total revenue” received by the school from the state every year for EYS services. That 10% far exceeds the statutory 5% cap on administrative expenses for schools with more than 1,500 students as outlined by 70 OS § 18-124 (schools with between 500-1,500 students may spend up to 7% on administrative expenses).

Second, the contract did not specify what goods and services the 10% fee was paying for. While 70 OS § 18-124 (A) allows schools with deduct expenditures for legal services from their administrative costs when calculating their total percentage of spending, since the contract did not specify or itemize exactly what services ECS was receiving there was no way to prove that the school was within statutory limits.

According to 70 OS § 18-124 (A), any school found exceeding the statutory limit, “shall have the amount which exceeds the five percent (5%) withheld the following year from the Foundation and Salary Incentive Aid for the school district.”

(Note: the current governing board of ECS, in a valiant attempt to undo the damage done by the school’s founders, has complied with this statute and agreed to forgo $20M in state funding over the next two years…an extraordinary step that should be applauded.)

Section D of 70 OS § 18-124 outlines what costs are deemed legitimate administrative expenditures:

  1. Staff for the board of education;
  2. The secretary/clerk for the board of education;
  3. Staff relations;
  4. Negotiations staff;
  5. Immediate staff of the superintendent, any elementary superintendent or any assistant superintendent;
  6. Any superintendent, elementary superintendent, or assistant superintendent;
  7. Any employee of a school district employed as a director, coordinator, supervisor, or who has responsibility for administrative functions of a school district; and
  8. Any consultant hired by the school district.

However, without a detailed itemized contract there was no way for ECS to prove they were in compliance with state law.

Third, and perhaps the most controversial, Harris and Chaney wrote into EYS contract with ECS that EYS was to manage a “student learning fund account.” Learning funds were accounts of between $800-$1000 per student that the parents were able to use to purchase non-faith-based curriculum (remember, ECS is a public school) or pay for extra-curricular activities such as sports, music, etc.

Much of this money was used by parents to pay for fees for their children to participate in the various homeschool associations throughout the state such as the OKC Storm Athletic Association (basketball, volleyball, track & field, etc.), the OKC Patriots Football Team, the OKC Broncos Baseball Team, and the Oklahoma Homeschool Band and Strings. This has been a sore spot for many parent-led homeschooling families as it brings public school dollars into the private homeschool organizations.

The money for these accounts came from ECS general funds and was deposited into a private bank account that Harris and Chaney had sole control over. Then Harris and Chaney tasked themselves to manage the learning funds on behalf of the school.

(Note: of the fifty subpoenas the SAI has issued in the course of their investigation, the subpoena for the learning funds accounts is the only one that remains tied up in Oklahoma County District Court. There was a hearing on this subpoena in 2020. SAI is still waiting Judge Natalie Mai’s ruling. This fact will become important later.)

The “learning funds” accounts was in addition to the 10% administrative fee required by ECS Operating Agreement. This raised the total amount of state-appropriated funds EYS received from the school to a whopping 30%. Both the learning funds, as well as, the administrative fees were deposited into two separate private accounts controlled by Harris and Chaney.

This meant that 30% of the schools funding was, according to the State Auditor, “locked down from any type of government oversight, and no one, not even our office, has ever been able to verify that the dollars placed into these accounts are being used for what they were intended for by law and by contract.”

The Cover-Up

Harris and Chaney were able to get away with all of this through a series of clever moves that, viewed in hindsight, appear to be made to deliberately cover-up their money-making scheme.

First, they hired Josh Brock – from Cushing – to serve as the CFO of both ECS and EYS. This meant that the person both writing and signing the checks from ECS to EYS was not only the same person, but also answered directly to Harris and Chaney. (Remember Brock’s name…it will come up again later)

Second, they hired a CPA by the name of Charles Crooks – also from Cushing – to serve as the school’s internal auditor. Crooks is a licensed CPA, Audit & Tax Partner with CBEW Professional Group, LLP. It was these internal audits presented to the ECS board of directors that assured them year after year that nothing was no malfeasance with their 10% administrative fee or learning funds account.

Note: we are NOT alleging that Mr. Crooks did anything improper…merely that it was his reports that allowed Harris and Chaney to convince the board everything was in compliance.

Third, from 2011-2019 Chaney served as the Superintendent of ECS…chosen by the school’s board of directors, who were appointed by Harris and Chaney.

When you put all of the pieces of the puzzle together, you have:

  • Harris and Chaney created the non-profit (Community Strategies, Inc.) which applied for, and received, the public charter for ECS. At the same time, Harris and Chaney created an EMO called EYS;
  • Harris and Chaney appointed the board of directors for Community Strategies, Inc., which then served as the governing board for ECS;
  • Harris and Chaney wrote into the operating agreement for Community Strategies that the non-profit would contract with EYS as the to-be-named charter school’s EMO;
  • Harris and Chaney wrote into the contract with EMO that EYS would receive an administrative fee equal to 10% of the total funding ECS received from the State – well in excess of the 5% statutory limit;
  • Harris and Chaney also wrote into the contract with ECS that EYS would manage $1,000/student learning funds;
  • Both the 10% administrative fees and moneys for the learning funds were deposited into a private account that Harris and Chaney had sole control over;
  • Harris and Chaney hired one man – Josh Brock – to serve as the CFO for both the school and EYS. They were able to do this because Harris was also serving as the school’s Superintendent at the same time;
  • Harris hired Mr. Crooks as the school’s internal auditor. These audits convinced the board of directors there was no malfeasance;
  • The combined learning funds and administrative fees totaled to 30% of all funds ECS received from the state.

In short, Harris and Chaney had literal and de facto control over the school – the source of revenue via public funds sent from the state – and EYS, which provided the full management for the school.

Just “Two guys making a profit” or Criminal Behavior?

While Bob Linn has repeatedly characterized this as “two guys providing a great service to the state, at lower costs, and getting very wealthy off of it”, the truth is far more complicated.

In the reports filed with OESC (Oklahoma Employment Security Commission) from 2010-2018, EYS had zero employees outside of the company’s two owners. You read that right. EYS was paid 30% of all state-funds that ECS received for work that they did not have the employees to do.

So, who did all of the work that the for-profit EYS was contracted to do, including managing the disbursement of the learning funds?

The answer? The employees of ECS that were paid out of the remaining 70% of state funds that the school retained after paying EYS for the same work.

This begs the question, if Harris and Chaney knew that the state-paid employees of ECS were going to be doing the work EYS was being paid for (because EYS did not have the capacity to perform the work due to have zero employees), then what work or services were Harris and Chaney knowingly taking the money for? Regardless of what work or services they were being paid for (if it was indeed anything at all), it was not the work or services for which the money was authorized for. 

This practice wasn’t just limited to EYS business in the State of Oklahoma. As the SAI audit revealed, and as the next article will detail, EYS was receiving payment from Epic California for the same services that ECS was paying them for. (We will discuss Harris and Chaney’s California ventures in a later article.)

This is where Harris, Chaney, and now Brock’s behavior goes from being unethical into what very well maybe criminal.

SAI Byrd has mentioned in a speech to the Oklahoma County GOP, including the audit’s findings, that Harris and Chaney’s behavior “could be considered embezzlement.” If so, then this would justify the OSBI launching their own investigation following the completion of the SAI’s audit.

To understand what Byrd meant by this statement, let’s take a look at how embezzlement is defined in Oklahoma law. 21 OS § 1451 (A)(1) defines embezzlement as:

(A) Embezzlement is the fraudulent appropriation of property of any person or legal entity, legally obtained, to any use or purpose not intended or authorized by its owner, or the secretion of the property with the fraudulent intent to appropriate it to such use or purpose, under any of the following circumstances: (emphasis added)

    1. Where the property was obtained by being entrusted to that person for a specific purpose, use, or disposition and shall include, but not be limited to, any funds “held in trust” for any purpose.

This would mean that any funds received by EYS for the “administrative services” that Harris and Chaney knew EYS had no capacity to perform, and that they knew would be performed by ECS (remember, Harris is the Superintendent of ECS) could fall under the embezzlement statutes listed above.

To be clear, it is unknown at this point what charges will be brought by the Oklahoma County DA’s office, who recently received the case from the AG. However, according to multiple speeches made by current SAI Cindy Byrd, these allegations are far too series for charges to not be brought.

In fact, during a Q&A following her speech last night to OK2A a member of the audience asked Byrd when charges were going to be filed against Harris, et al. Her response was, “very soon”.

Remember how we said at the top of this article that the entire purpose of SAI Investigative Audits was to determine if there was grounds for the State’s criminal investigative agencies to conduct their own investigations? Give the evidence above, it’s hard to see how they could ignore it.

What’s Bob Linn’s Excuse?

Given all of this above, one must ask the questions, “Why did Bob Linn have a problem with the SAI doing the job she is required by law to do?” Furthermore, “Why has Bob Linn not excoriated Governor Stitt for ordering the audit of Epic? Did he expect the SAI to be derelict in her duty and refuse the Governor’s order for the audit? If she did refuse to perform the audit, would Linn have blasted her for failing to do the job we elected her to do? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to the same accusations he’s been leveling at the SAI Office for the OSDH audit…that the Auditor’s office didn’t do their job?”

It all begs the question, “What is Bob Linn so afraid of?” Considering the evidence from the SAI audit certainly warranted a further criminal investigation, why does he not want the truth to be known? Does he have deeper connections to Epic than he’s told the public…or the board of OCPAC? Is he worried that a criminal investigation may implicate him in some way? To coin a phrase that he has used against Byrd, “What is Bob Linn hiding?” Why does he not want the auditor to simply do the job she was hired to do?

In the next article, we will detail how Harris, Chaney, and Brock extended their scheme beyond the borders of Oklahoma into California, and even attempted to take it to Texas.

As for Mr. Linn, we leave you with this:

“For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light.” Luke 8:17 (NKJV)

 

 

Filed Under: Bob Linn - Friend of Liberty or Enemy of Truth?, Featured Stories, Special Reports

SPECIAL REPORT: Bob Linn – Friend of Liberty, or Enemy of Truth?

April 19, 2022

SPECIAL REPORT

Bob Linn, President of OCPAC

Members of the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee (OCPAC) as well as anyone who has regularly attended their weekly meetings or read the weekly newsletters published by OCPAC’s President Bob Linn, know that for the last two plus years Linn has used that platform to publicly attack the Office of State Auditor & Inspector (SAI) in general, and current SAI Cindy Byrd in specific.

Over that time period, Linn’s criticism of Byrd has primarily focused on the office’s response to his Open Records Request (ORR) for records pertaining to the SAI audit of the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH). If you remember, prior to Byrd’s tenure as SAI a huge scandal broke out surrounding the OSDH when their internal accounting system incorrectly showed approximately $30M of taxpayer money was missing, which resulted in nearly 200 OSDH employees being laid-off statewide.

Throughout most of 2021, Linn repeatedly accused Byrd of being part of an elaborate cover-up by slow-walking her office’s response to his ORR – though Linn never actually said what he thought she was “covering up.” Linn has intimated that the alleged “missing” $30M was due to malfeasance or dereliction of duty on behalf of the SAI (and not the OSDH despite their flawed internal accounting system) and has leveled the bulk of the responsibility for that on Byrd, supposedly for her alleged refusal to completely respond to his ORR in a timely manner.

Linn’s outrage has puzzled many OCPAC attendees on two accounts:

  1. During the time period that Linn alleges the SAI was “responsible” for the OSDH accounting errors, Byrd was assigned to the office’s County Audit Division out of Ada, and was not party to the OSDH audit; and
  2. As revealed in a recently discovered letter Auditor Byrd wrote to the OCPAC Board of Directors,Byrd did respond fully and completely to his ORR.

What has made Linn’s relentless attacks on Byrd especially puzzling is that it represents a 180º turnaround for Linn after OCPAC unanimously endorsed Byrd during her 2018 campaign. During that election, Byrd racked up a commanding victory, outpacing even Governor Stitt by over 174,000 votes on the way to receiving the most votes for a statewide official ever in the history of the state with over 818,000 Oklahomans supporting her.

Because of this, Ignite Liberty recently called Linn to attempt to ascertain a better understanding of why he has focused so much of his ire on Byrd. He requested we send any questions about Byrd to him in writing. We sent him the following question:

“If Cindy Byrd was not the auditor in charge of the OSDH audit re: the “missing” $30M, why have you continued to attack her for the audit and not focused all of your attacks on Gary Jones…especially when OCPAC donated money to her campaign and openly supported her?

Much of your weekly emails have accused her office of trying to keep information hidden from you, and accused them of delaying responding to your ORR. Yet in the end you stated today that you got everything you asked for. You also stated today that they should have just copied files over easily.  My own experience with requesting ORR from state agencies is that it does take a while to get the information back. Regulatory procedures required for ORR/FOIA requests do require an agency to do their due diligence to ensure information subject to the privacy act/ongoing criminal investigations/or other information not subject to FOIA are redacted. Do you feel like the time they took to fulfill your ORR was unreasonable?”

Not surprisingly, we have never received a response.

Clues In The Past

We began reviewing the timeline of Linn’s comments about Cindy from the time Linn took over as President of OCPAC in the summer of 2018 through the present to see if we could pinpoint when his attitude began to change. What we discovered unlocked a treasure trove of clues.

Linn’s first public attacks on Byrd were in October 7th, 2020, immediately following the release of the SAI Audit of Epic Charter Schools. You can see the entirety of Linn’s comments below:

https://igniteliberty.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Little-Marxist-2.16-to-4.48.mp4

 

 Ignite Liberty was present at that meeting and remember well the shock that ripped through the audience following his statements. His comments were part of an introduction of Brian Hobbs, who spoke to the OCPAC audience to defend Epic’s founders, Ben Harris and David Chaney, in light of the release of the damning audit. Those comments are below:

https://igniteliberty.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Bob-Linn-OCPAC-5-12-21-FULL.mp4

 

The attacks at the October 7th meeting mirror those in the October 5th newsletter. However, all newsletters for 2020 have been scrubbed not only from OCPAC’s website, but from archive.org as well (the “Wayback Machine”).

It was shortly after this that Linn submitted his ORR for the now 2-year-old OSDH audit – which Byrd was not party to – that he since has used to repeatedly badger Byrd and her office.

To many who attend OCPAC regularly, and those who watch online, Linn’s use of the OSDH ORR to attack Byrd – even going so far as to bring in a “expert” by the name of Steve Anderson to help – has made no sense whatsoever.

Given that the pivot point in his behavior was not the OSDH scandal, but the SAI audit of Epic Charter Schools – which Linn has repeatedly praised and defended – reason would have it that the Linn’s use of the OSDH scandal has been a blatant attempt to cast public doubt on the veracity of the Epic audit. After all, if he can somehow prove that the Byrd used her office to “cover up” the scandal at the OSDH through denying or slow-walking his ORR, then his allegations that she is using her office to engage in a witch hunt of the Epic founders would carry some weight.

There are two problems with this:

  1. As mentioned above, Byrd was not connected in any way to the OSDH Audit, and fully answered and complete Linn’s ORR for the OSDH Audit files. In our phone call with Linn, he even admitted that “we got everything we asked for. Nothing was redacted.”
  2. The Investigative Audit of Epic Charter Schools was ordered by Governor Stitt pursuant to 74 O.S. § 212(c). Not once has Linn criticized the Governor for ordering the audit. Instead, he used Steve Anderson to attack the veracity of the audit’s findings, and then continued to use Anderson to attack Byrd’s response to the ORR of the OSDH Audit.

Those familiar with the tactics used by renowned Marxist activist Saul Alinsky (mentor to Hillary Clinton among others) know that one of his favorite tactics was to attack an demonize the messenger – not the message – in order to destroy that messenger’s credibility to the public.

If Linn is correct and the finding of the Epic audit are indeed flawed then he may have a point in accusing Byrd of using her office to attack “two guys who provide a great service at half the cost and make millions doing it” (Linn’s frequent characterization of Harris and Chaney).

If, however, the Epic audit is grounded in the law and on well-documented facts, then the members of OCPAC should ask the OCPAC board why its President is using Alinsky-style tactics to demonize an elected official carrying out her sworn duty…for such action is usually only done when the person making the accusations has something to lose, be it in monetary gain, power, or both.

To get to the bottom of all of this, we decided to dig into the audit ourselves to determine whether the SAI’s findings carry substance. In an upcoming series of articles, we will lay out our findings including many facts that the main stream media – and most of the “conservative” media – has ignored.

It is not the purpose of this investigation to assign guilt or innocence to Harris, Chaney and Company – and should note that at the time of publication charges have yet to be filed. It is the purpose of this investigation to see whether Linn’s accusations against Byrd are warranted.

What we did find, and will endeavor to make clear, is that when SAI Byrd stated publicly that the office’s findings in the Epic audit was “the largest example of public fraud in the history of the State”, that statement was not made lightly.

There is powerful, convincing evidence not only to justify the call for the audit, but to thoroughly justify Byrd’s assessment. As you read the articles to follow, we urge the readers to ask “did Bob Linn know about all of this…and if so, why did he try so hard to defend the actions of Epic Youth Service (EYS)?”

It’s a question that every member of OCPAC…every conservative in the State of Oklahoma should be asking.

Filed Under: Bob Linn - Friend of Liberty or Enemy of Truth?, Featured Stories, Special Reports

Oklahoma Turnpike Authority: The Biggest Bully on the Block (Part 1)

March 15, 2022

Part 1 – A Brief Background of the OTA

SPECIAL REPORT

Imagine for a moment if the state legislature decided to create a privately funded organization in order to take over an essential function of government, and then gave that entity the power for condemnation to seize private property anytime it wants to in order to accomplish its goals.

If that were being discussed in the current legislative session there would be an outcry unlike anything this state has ever seen. Any legislator voting for it would face a wave challengers in the next election along with demands for their immediate resignation.

The scenario I just described, however, is not fiction…it’s what happened almost 70 years ago when the legislature created the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority.

In the coming series of articles in this special report, we will shed light on the true legal nature of the OTA and expose their history of abuse of power that makes the dream of home ownership a myth for many Oklahomans. It is our hope through this expose´ that Oklahomans will see that no entity is too big or too powerful to challenge if the citizens of this state will use the tools given to them in the Oklahoma Constitution to fight back against abusive “state” entities.

A Brief History of the OTA

The OTA was created through an initiative referendum passed by the state legislature in 1954. For those of you not familiar with the different types of state questions available under the Oklahoma Constitution, here’s a brief explanation:

Initiative Petition:

A process by which the legal voters of Oklahoma have the right to propose any legislative measure or to propose amendments to the Oklahoma Constitution.

Legislative Referendum:

A method used by the Legislature to submit a proposed measure to the legal voters of Oklahoma.

Referendum Petition:

A process by which the legal voters of Oklahoma propose changes to legislation from the current legislative session, (except as to laws necessary for the immediate preservation of public peace, health or safety). Referendum petitions must be filed with the Secretary of State not more than ninety (90) days after the final adjournment of the session of the Legislature which passed the bill on which the referendum is demanded.

An example of the Initiative Petition is the recent State Questions that legalized medical marijuana.

In 1953, the state legislature passed SB 454 and HB 933 as Referendum Petitions creating the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority and authorizing the construction of two turnpikes. One became the H.E. Bailey Turnpike which connects Wichita Falls, Texas and Oklahoma City. The other was supposed to connect Oklahoma City and Wichita, Kansas along the same route as the eventual IH-35, but was never built because of the construction of the interstate.

Those two bills would then become State Questions 359 and 360, which went before a vote of the people on 26 January, 1955 in a special election. Both questions passed by identical percentage points of 56%-44%. SQ 359 passed by a margin of 40,586 votes with 174,236 voting for and 133,650 voting against. SQ 360 also passed by a 39,030 vote margin with 171,151 voting for and 132,121 voting against.

A New Kind of Entity

In the creation of the OTA, the legislature and people of Oklahoma created a new hybrid entity that was both private and public at the same time. Section 2 of State Question 360 (codified as 69 O.S. § 1703) defined the new “authority” as,

Corporate and politic to be known as the ‘Oklahoma Turnpike Authority’ and by that name the Authority may sue and be sued, and plead and be impleaded. The Authority is hereby constituted an instrumentality of the state, and the exercise by the Authority of the powers conferred by this act in the construction, operation, and maintenance of turnpike projects shall be deemed and held to be an essential governmental function of the state with all the attributes thereof.”(emphasis added)

Politically speaking, then, the OTA is imbued with the full power of the State, and with that comes the power of condemnation, otherwise known as eminent domain.

Understanding the nature of this relationship takes a rudimentary understanding of the Law of Agency. Without going through a 1L Contract Law class, the Law of Agency can be summed up as a relationship in which one person has legal authority to act for another. That includes the authority of the agent to bind the principal to financial obligations. The law of agency is based on the Latin maxim “Qui facit per alium, facit per se,” which means “he who acts through another is deemed in law to do it himself.”

Under this legal principle, the principal is legally responsible for the actions of their agent as long as they are acting under the auspices of the principal. Meaning, if the agent breaks the law, the principle could be held liable for damages as long as the principal knew what the agent was doing and the agent was acting in the full faith and credit of the principle.

Likewise, any legal restrictions on the principal would automatically apply to the agent, insomuch as those restrictions govern the actions related to their relationship. For instance, in domestic law cases when a VPO (victim’s protection order) is issued against an abuser in order to protect their victim from further abuse the VPO usually includes language that extends the legal restriction to the agents of the abuser.

One would expect that an agency of the State would have the same authority – namely to bind the State to contracts – to act on it’s authority, and to risk the State being sued should that agent act in a manner that violated any principle of civil or criminal law. Certainly if the State gives an agency the power of condemnation (one of its sternest powers), then the State should be legally liable for the actions of that agent.

However, that relationship does not exist for the OTA. 69 O.S. § 1705 (d), which gives the OTA its authority, states that, “Oklahoma Turnpike Authority is hereby authorized and empowered:

(d) To sue and be sued in contract, reverse condemnation, equity, mandamus and similar actions in its own name, plead and be impleaded; provided, that any and all actions at law or in equity against the Authority shall be brought in the county in which the principal office of the Authority shall be located, or in the county of the residence of the plaintiff, or the county where the cause of action arose. All privileges granted to the Authority and duties enjoined upon the Authority by the provisions of Sections 1701 through 1734 of this title may be enforced in a court of competent jurisdiction in an action in mandamus.”

The words at the beginning of paragraph D carry enormous legal significance. The actions that are named (to sue and be sued, plead and be impleaded, etc.) are actions that define a legal entity as being separate from another. For instance, when a child turns 18, known in the law as the “age of majority”, that child can then sue and be sued, plead and be impleaded in his or her own name as opposed to their parents. They are now legally responsible for themselves at all times.

As such, the words “in its own name” draw a sharp, clear distinction between an agent of the State – one imbued to act with full State authority, and for which the State is fully responsible – and a private entity. An agent or agency of the State, like the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, has full state authority but also binds to the State to any and all contracts it signs. The State is also responsible for overseeing and funding that agency.

By including the words “in its own name” in the definition of powers listed in 69 O.S. § 1705, the State has not created an agency. It has defined a legally separate entity for which the State cannot be held legally liable, and which does not have the authority to bind the State to contracts.

However, the State then gave this “private” entity the same legal authority the State has, namely the power to seize property by force using eminent domain in order to build turnpikes. Remember the words we italicized in 69 O.S. § 1703 above? “The Authority is hereby constituted an instrumentality of the state…projects shall be deemed and held to be an essential governmental function of the state with all the attributes thereof.” Sure seems like a full “state agency” doesn’t it?

Yet in Section 1 of SQ 360 (codified as 69 O.S. § 1702) the State tries to distance itself from the “agency” relationship:

Turnpike revenue bonds issued under the provisions on this article shall not at any time be deemed to constitute a debt of the state or of any political subdivision thereof or a pledge of the faith and credit of the state or of any such political subdivision.”

Confused yet?

This very notion seems to fly in the face of representative government.

One of Oklahoman’s constitutional rights protected by both the Oklahoma and U.S. Constitutions is the right to redress their government for grievances. If the state legislature or state agencies do something we don’t like, we have the right to hold them accountable through courts of equity or through the ballot box.

And yet, there exists no recourse whatsoever for the citizens of Oklahoma to against the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority for redress of grievances, even though this same authority has been given the Constitutional power of eminent domain. Just ask the Oklahomans who have tried to stop their power of eminent domain in court. The citizens of Oklahoma have lost…every single time.

The line between public and private gets even blurrier when you look at who currently heads the OTA. The Board of Directors are chosen according to the OTA’s bylaws (which they are authorized to create under 69 O.S. § 1705 (b)). The Executive Staff is chosen by the Board of Directors. Yet both of those entities contain State Officials. The Governor is always an ex officio member of the Board, and the current Executive Director of the OTA is Tim Gatz – who simultaneously serves as the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and as Governor Stitt’s Secretary of Transportation (more on this potential conflict of interest in the next article).

But Aren’t The Turnpike Supposed To Eventually Be Free?

When the voters passed SQ 359 and 360, they were promised that the turnpikes would eventually be free, once their bonds were paid off. Section 9 of State Question 360, which was codified after passage as 69 O.S. 1951, § 667, included the following passage:

When all bonds issued under the provisions of this article and the interest thereon shall have been paid or a sufficient amount for the payment of all such bonds and the interest thereon to the maturity thereof shall have been set aside in trust for the benefit of the bondholders, such projects, if then in good condition and repair to the satisfaction of the Commission, shall become part of the state highway system and shall thereafter be maintained by the Commission free of tolls.

This section is often quoted by turnpike opponents in frustration as to why Oklahomans are still being charged tolls on the State’s original turnpikes decades after the construction is finished and the bond should have been paid off.

The answer lies in HB 501 of the 32nd Legislative Session in 1968. That bill amended 69 O.S. § 667, and codified the amendments as 69 O.S. § 1717, to which the following language was added:

Provided, that when all bonds for any turnpike project and the interest thereon shall have been paid or such provision for payment made, prior to payment of the bonds and interest on any other project or projects, such project shall continue to be operated as a toll facility at toll rates not less than the lowest rate being charged on any project, until all bonds issued by the Authority and the interest thereon shall have been paid or such provisions for payment made. The revenues of such paid-out projects shall be used and applied by the Authority in paying the obligations or depositing in the sinking fund of such other turnpike projects in the following order: (a) To any project or projects in default on interest: (b) to any project or projects in default on principal; (c) to any project or projects having insufficient reserves or sinking fund under its trust agreement. If all such other projects have sufficient reserves then the revenues from such paid-out project shall be prorated between such other projects on the basis of the outstanding bonds of each project. If two or more projects fall within any of the above categories, then the revenues shall be prorated between them on the basis of the outstanding bonds of each project.

The law was amended again in 2003 (SB 464) and 2005 (HB 1969) requiring further legislative approval for any transfer of turnpike to ODOT. Those changes are now codified as 69 O.S. § 1717.1.

In plain English, that bill gave the OTA two new “powers” that have allowed it to rule over Oklahomans with impunity. First, it allowed the revenues from existing turnpikes to go to fund the expenses on any new turnpike projects. That means that if you drive the Kilpatrick or Turner Turnpikes (whose bonds have long since been paid off) you are literally paying for roads you are not driving on.

Second, it allowed all toll roads to remain under the control of the OTA as long as the bonds to build the new turnpikes weren’t paid off. Since then, the OTA has engaged in clever bond financing to ensure that their debt servicing continues in near-perpetuity. A few examples of that are available  on OTA’s website:

  • Bonds in the amount of $558.4 million were issued in February 1989. $385.4 million was for the construction of the Cherokee Turnpike and the first sections of the Kilpatrick, Creek, and Chickasaw Turnpikes. The remaining $173 million was used to advance refund all of the outstanding Authority bonds from 1966 and 1971.
  • In October 1991, bonds in the amount of $50 million were issued to provide funds sufficient, together with other funds of the Authority, for the completion of the Portland Interchange on the Kilpatrick Turnpike and certain other improvements to the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority.
  • In May 1992, bonds in the amount of $608.3 million were issued in order to refinance approximately 94% of the Authority’s outstanding debt and in effect decreased the Authority’s aggregate debt service payments by approximately $36.8 million over the next 30 years. This action also resulted in economic gain (the difference between the present value of the old and new debt service payments) of approximately $29.4 million.
  • In October 1992, bonds in the amount of $50.8 million were issued to refund the 1991 Revenue Bonds and in effect decreased the Authority’s aggregate debt service payments by approximately $4.5 million over the next 25 years. This action also resulted in a cash-basis economic gain (the difference between the present value of the old and new debt service payments) of approximately $1.4 million.
  • On May 14, 2002, the Authority issued $314,065,000 of Series 2002A Refunding Second Senior Revenue Bonds, and $255,575,000 of Series 2002B Refunding Second Senior Revenue Bonds. The Series 2002 Bonds were issued for the purpose of refunding the remaining Series 1989 Revenue Bonds, the Series 1992A-E Revenue Bonds, and portions of the 1992F and 1992G Bonds and in effect decreased the Authority’s aggregate debt service payments by approximately $50.9 million over the next 20 years. This action also resulted in a present value cash-basis gain (the difference between the present value of the old and new debt service payments) of approximately $32,583,380.

The last three examples are of particular interest, as they were not bonds issued to “construct, maintain, repair, and operate turnpike projects” as allowed by 69 O.S. § 1701, which should call into question their legality.

Combine these two powers with the power of eminent domain, and OTA’s authority to continue to seize private property, build turnpikes wherever they wish (including through wildlife preserves – more on that in the next article), charge whatever they wish, and then hold the registration of your vehicle hostage if you don’t pay up remains unchecked.

Consequently, if any of these powers were taken away by the people of Oklahoma through an initiative petition (either to pass legislation or amend the Oklahoma Constitution), the power of OTA to continue to charge for turnpikes already paid for and take private property by force would be essentially neutered.

Sure, no one has to take the tollways…unless you want to drive to Tulsa, Lawton, or spend 30-min to and hour extra in your commute (which burns through how much gas?) trying to drive from Broadway Extension over to Hefner Parkway. It’s kinda like how no one had to pay the mob in Chicago for protection…but life went a lot better for you if you did.

The Victims of OTA’s Abuse

In the next article, we will profile some of the victim’s of OTA’s unchecked authority, including those homeowners threatened with loss of the homes down in Norman. And yes, as referred to above, homeowners aren’t the only ones affected. OTA is even threatening the dead.

Editor’s Note: those of you who followed us on Facebook will know by now that we are no longer on that platform. We are working hard to transition over to Gab, and eventually Truth Media. In the meantime, you can help us out by sharing articles like this one on your social media platforms. Even though we’re not there, anyone can still share our articles on any of the social media platforms you wish. 

Filed Under: Featured Stories, Oklahoma Turnpike Authority - The Biggest Bully on the Block, Special Reports

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