EXCLUSIVE: State legislators seek answers on contested Turnpike; local officials remain silent

TULSA COUNTY, Okla. — Two Oklahoma legislators are joining Berryhill-area residents in calling for answers about the legality of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority (OTA)’s plan to charge tolls on a stretch of the Gilcrease Expressway. But getting answers from the local officials behind the project hasn’t been so easy.

FOX23 obtained a copy of a letter Oklahoma State Senator Cody Rogers (R-Tulsa) and State Representative Lonnie Sims (R-Jenks) sent to Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor earlier this month.

The letter asked O’Connor to issue opinions on three questions relating to the new five mile extension of the Gilcrease Expressway set to open as turnpike within weeks.

In the letter, they explained their constituents’ concerns and ask O’Connor to issue an opinion on whether it is “legal for an Oklahoma community’s safest, most convenient and free access road to be converted to a toll road.”

FOX23 has been reporting for months that people in the Tulsa County community of Berryhill, and surrounding areas, feel they were lied to when it comes to how the new extension of the Gilcrease Expressway through their community would be tolled.

Specifically, they said they should not have to pay tolls to drive on a one mile stretch of the road between I-44 and 41st Street, because that route has been open to the public for decades as a free-to-use, tax-supported road.

“What we want to do, we want to be treated fairly,” Berryhill resident Frank Mason said.

Ever since Mason has lived there, he’s always heard about the plan to build the Gilcrease Expressway through Berryhill—as a freeway.

“We moved over here… in 1968,” Mason said. “We did not want a turnpike through here.”

But plans change.

“There are no free roads in Oklahoma,” Oklahoma Turnpike Authority Deputy Director Joe Echelle told FOX23.

Echelle said since the early 60s, the plan was to have a public entity, like the City of Tulsa, Tulsa County or Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) use tax dollars to build the five mile section of the expressway, heading west from I-44, then curving north to connect with Highway 412.

Several decades ago, Echelle said ODOT spent public dollars to build a two lane portion of the expressway between I-44 and 41st Street, with the plan to expand and extend it later in small sections as tax-based funding became available.

He said Tulsa County handled maintenance and upkeep on that stretch in the years since it was constructed.

Also over the years, the City of Tulsa spent millions of taxpayer dollars to buy up land to obtain the right-of way needed to get the entire road built.

The centerpiece of the project is a massive bridge carrying traffic over the Arkansas River.

And it’s the cost of that bridge that Echelle said led Tulsa county, the City of Tulsa, ODOT and the Indian Nations Council of Governments (INCOG) to call in the Turnpike Authority in 2015. They announced OTA would build the bridge as a toll bridge, because none of those four public entities could afford it.

“When the plan was announced in 2015, it was just gonna be the bridge,” said Echelle.

But Echelle said there was a problem. If OTA built a toll bridge, it needed to connect to the major highways.

“We started talking about how we were going to build the rest of it, who would put in the initial money,” Echelle said.

Echelle said OTA leaders met with leaders from the city, county, ODOT and INCOG, and all said they couldn’t pay for it.

In 2018, OTA announced it would build the rest of the expressway and open it as a turnpike.

Construction started in 2020. But this past march, when neighbors like Melissa Myers saw toll scanners go up on the road, she and countless others were confused.

“That was the last thing they did,” Myers said. “We were like… what’s happening?”

They were confused, because they saw toll scanners went up over that route between I-44 and 41st Street that not only had been open as a free road for decades, but has also remained open as a free road during construction.

Myers said they assumed tolls would only be added to the new sections north of 41st, since they never existed as a free roadway.

“That is not what they’ve said, that’s not what we’ve been told,” Myers said.

But Echelle claims that was never going to be the case.

“That section that was built in the past was a temporary connection,” Echelle said.

In February 2018, the Oklahoma Turnpike held a public meeting at Chandler Park to announce they would be taking over the entire project. Hundreds attended that meeting, and OTA leaders presented detailed depictions of the route the road would run, renderings of what it would look like, and how it would be built.

FOX23 obtained copies of flyers and letters sent to hundreds of nearby residents advising them about the town hall. They even took out newspaper ads.

Those flyers included maps of the project and renderings of the finished road. None of those maps indicated where toll scanners would be located.

A ‘project description’ section on those flyers said the following:

“The project will begin where the existing Gilcrease Expressway connects to I-44 just south of W. 51st Street S., and will end just north of US-412 at Edison Street. The project will construct a new four-lane highway. The two directions of traffic will be separated by a 48-foot center median with safety cable barrier. Interchange access will be provided at W. 51st Street, W. 41st Street, W. 21st Street, and US-412. The project also includes a 10-foot-wide multiuse trail that will begin at W. 51st Street and connect to the existing Katy Trail on the north side of the Arkansas River.

Highway lighting will be provided for the entire length of the project.”

FOX23 could not find any material sent to residents or publicly advertised ahead of the February meeting that indicated the existing stretch of the expressway would become tolled.

Echelle admitted, OTA did not inform the public where the toll scanners would be located at that time.

“At the presentation we gave in 2018, we were still analyzing where those locations were gonna be,” Echelle said.

FOX23 obtained OTA public meeting records. The only mentions of toll scanner locations FOX23 could find ever presented to the public happened months after that largely attended Chandler Park Meeting.

FOX23 found the locations weren’t presented publicly until a regularly scheduled working group meeting held between OTA, the City of Tulsa, Tulsa County, ODOT and INCOG in November 2018. They were also presented at another working group meeting in May 2019.

While those meetings were open to the public to attend, they are largely procedural, serving as an opportunity for the entities to update each other on the project’s status. Working group meetings are held periodically, and attendance records obtained by FOX23 indicate they are rarely attended by anyone beyond the public officials taking part.

“That’s the problem… is no transparency, and no up-front of what’s going on,” Myers said.

FOX23 was there in April as hundreds of people voiced their frustrations at another community forum after the toll scanners were installed.

“The main goal that we have is to eliminate the 51st to 41st street toll,” one resident told leaders.

They said having to pay a toll to get to 41st street means they’ll lose their only adequate free access to their community. Instead, they’d be forced to take side roads.

“There’s no lighting, there’s no shoulder, there’s no ditches,” Mason said.

Echelle told FOX23 OTA did drivers a favor by not tolling them until after the 51st street exit if coming from I-44.

“That section could have been tolled,” Echelle said.

But just about as close to that exit as you can get is a brand new Amazon warehouse that currently sits empty and unused. It’s part of a larger industrial park, home to multiple warehouses and distribution centers, being developed just off 51st Street and the Gilcrease Expressway.

“They’re not ever going to have to pay, unless they’re going to make a delivery,” Myers said. “So they get to go to their work for free and travel.”

FOX23 asked Echelle, why not drop the toll between 51st and 41st and just make the rest of the tolls on the road a bit higher?

“This particular segment, in order for this road to be here, this is how it had to be done,” Echelle said.

Echelle said the OTA got what’s called a TIFIA loan from the federal government that required that section to be tolled. But people, like Myers and Mason, want to know why they weren’t told that before taking out the loan.

“All the decisions were being made behind the scenes, a lot of them without our input,” Mason said.

FOX23 asked the City of Tulsa for an on-camera interview with officials to discuss the city’s role in the project. A city spokesperson told us we would need to ask all our questions about the city’s role to the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority.

Tulsa County District 2 Commissioner Karen Keith has been heavily involved in the project. FOX23 coordinated with Keith and set up an interview in early August to ask questions about the county’s role in the project and why the project needed to be handed to OTA.

One hour before that interview was set to happen, FOX23 received the following voicemail from Tulsa County Assistant District Attorney James Rea:

“My name is James Rea, I’m an Assistant District Attorney with Tulsa County. I was calling you to let you know the interview you have scheduled with Commissioner Keith this morning is canceled. And… um… and I’m not really sure what that would do to help you. The Gilcrease Expressway issue is really an Oklahoma Turnpike Authority Issue.”

A short time later, Tulsa County announced Rea had accepted a new position as Commissioner Keith’s Chief Deputy.

But even in an email he also sent FOX23 relating to the cancellation of the interview, he identified himself as an Assistant District Attorney.

FOX23 also submitted an open records requests about two months ago to the city and county. FOX23 is still waiting to get those records.

FOX23 also sent similar record requests to the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority at the same time. Most of those requests have been fulfilled by the Authority.

As for the letter Senator Rogers and Representative Sims sent Attorney General O’Connor, Sims tells FOX23 so far they have not heard back from O’Connor.

FOX23 will continue to follow this story and push for answers, and will bring you more updates as we get them.