Lawyers Allege Mishandling of ACCESS Tollway Project Payments, OTA Appeals Violation of Open Meetings Act

[ad_1]

A new lawsuit filed in Cleveland County District Court alleges that the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority improperly remedied its violation of the Open Meeting Act and owes approximately $42 million.

In December, the OTA was found to be in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act due to vague wording in its January and February meeting agendas, which authorized engineering and design contracts. keys to his controversial ACCESS Oklahoma project. The agency then suspended all operations of the ACCESS project on December 8.

But lawyers Stan Ward, Alexey Tarasov and Richard Lebarthe, the team that won the Open Meeting case, said the contract payments already made cannot be ratified because the contracts themselves were voided by the decision of the law courts.

How could payments made under invalidated contracts be endorsed? If there is a defect in contract formation and a contract is null and void, there can be no payment under that contract, Tarasov said. They should have entered into new contracts with companies in accordance with the Open Meeting Act.

Tarasov said the OTA’s defense that payments to contractors were made in good faith, i.e. relying on the advice of an organization lawyer can absolve the agents involved in the distribution of agency funds. But during the discovery period of the Open Meeting Act cases, Tarasov said OTA officials testified in depositions that they did not rely on counsel’s advice.

For the OTA to say there was trust [on legal counsel] now would go against what they revealed to us in the previous trial, Tarasov said. We asked directly if the opinion of the legal counsel had been relied upon to vote on these agenda items.

Either way, the good faith defense does not apply to outside entities such as engineering companies, so they are responsible for the funds, Tarasov said.

No amount of good faith can overcome the fact that the contracts were, for all intents and purposes, invalidated, Tarasov said. If you invalidate the vote of the council that authorized the conclusion of these contracts, it is equivalent to an invalidation of the contracts themselves.

An OTA spokesperson said he could not yet comment on the specifics of this case, but also points to a legal decision he made last week: the OTA filed an appeal with the Court. Supreme Court to re-decide whether he had indeed violated the Open Meetings Act.

The appeal challenges several of the courts’ findings, including that he deliberately violated the law and that his agenda items lacked sufficient detail.

The email cites a general prosecutor’s decision from 1981:

If a public body concludes that it may have willfully violated the provisions of the Open Meetings Act, the public body must fully reconsider such actions in violation of the Act. Such a review, of course, must be done in accordance with the Act.

This decision also reads, the word voluntary in [state law] does not require a demonstration of bad faith, malice or debauchery, and includes unintentional violations.

The OTA Board complied with Attorney General’s Opinion 1981 OK AG-214 when it fully reconsidered and voted to approve the contracts in accordance with the OMA Compliant Agenda Items at its meeting ordinary of January 3, indicates the e-mail.

The spokesperson said the OTA’s ratification action at its January 2023 board meeting had sufficiently rehabilitated what the Court had deemed insufficient.

The plaintiffs’ new request is an abuse of the legal system to threaten and inappropriately pressure officials and their consultants to halt a much-needed public transport improvement and expansion project, said the spokesperson.

[ad_2]