{"id":35423,"date":"2022-12-08T16:28:54","date_gmt":"2022-12-08T22:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=35423"},"modified":"2022-12-08T16:28:54","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T22:28:54","slug":"oklahoma-turnpike-authority-puts-access-on-pause-after-lawsuit-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2022\/12\/08\/oklahoma-turnpike-authority-puts-access-on-pause-after-lawsuit-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma Turnpike Authority puts ACCESS on pause after lawsuit loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority has now lost two recent court decisions regarding the $5 billion ACCESS Oklahoma turnpike project. And in response, the agency is tapping the brakes on the project.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Earlier this month, a district court ruled the OTA had violated the state\u2019s Open Meeting Act because it used vague wording in agendas for meetings that authorized the ACCESS project.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the OTA argued to the state Supreme Court that it, rather than the district court, should make that call. Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled it didn\u2019t agree and let the district court\u2019s decision stand.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.accessoklahoma.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ACCESS Oklahoma<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> project was announced following the Feb. 22 OTA board meeting. The project would construct new turnpike extensions in Oklahoma and Cleveland Counties, among others, some of which are estimated to force over <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pikeoffota.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">600 homeowners<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> out of their properties \u2014 though the OTA said this number is closer to 200.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The district court\u2019s decision invalidated the ACCESS-related actions taken during the meetings in question, which amounts to about $69 million in engineering contracts for the project.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The OTA will have to go back to the drawing board to re-vote on the ACCESS project approvals. Wednesday, the agency sent out a mass email saying it would be halting all contract work on all ACCESS projects until the re-vote.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But while ACCESS has hit a stumbling block for now, the OTA said it will \u201cmove in a deliberate and thoughtful manner, in compliance with the Court\u2019s decision, to progress ACCESS Oklahoma.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority has now lost two recent court decisions regarding the $5 billion ACCESS Oklahoma turnpike project. And in response, the agency is tapping the brakes on the project.Earlier this month, a district court ruled the OTA had violated the state\u2019s Open Meeting Act because it used vague wording in agendas for meetings [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":34829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35423"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35424,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35423\/revisions\/35424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}