Two attorneys in Rogers County said the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority has been collecting tolls illegally for several months.
In a class action lawsuit filed Tuesday, the attorneys argue a law signed by Governor Frank Keating 25 years ago means the stretch of I-44 between Catoosa and Claremore should be free.
Former State Senator Stratton Taylor and current Cherokee Tribal Councilman Kevin Easley Jr. filed the lawsuit in Rogers County District Court on behalf of Kevin Easley Sr.
According to Taylor, Title 69 of the Oklahoma Statutes required that tolls be lifted once the new Highway 20 was connected with the Will Rogers Turnpike between Claremore and Catoosa.
“We’re also seeking reimbursement for all turnpike fees for motorists who have been paying tolls between the Claremore gates and Catoosa,” Easley Jr. said, in a news release.
Easley said it should not cost anything to travel on the turnpike between Catoosa and Claremore, now that a new, five-mile stretch of Highway 20 is open.
Related Story: SH-20 realignment opens in Claremore, connecting to Will Rogers Turnpike
“We’re now four months later and the tolls have yet to be removed,” Easley said.
The new highway was 30 years in the making, and Easley argues that a bill signed into law 25 years ago means ODOT should be leasing the road from the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, making it free to drivers.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, says, “… OTA and ODOT thumbed their noses at the motoring public by not giving them a free four-lane road parallel to the Turnpike or removing the tolls…”
Former state Senator Stratton Taylor, also on the case, hasn’t forgotten the bipartisan bill he authored back in the year 2000.
“At that time, there were plans that were going to have a parallel free four-lane road that would go north to connect to the existing Highway 20 to lead to Pryor,” Taylor said in a phone call with News On 6. “I met with Secretary of Transportation Neal McCaleb and said, This is why people don’t like government. You have one agency of government that builds roads, that’s going to build one next to an existing four-lane road. Why don’t we have them work together?”
Taylor and Easley said they already have plans for how to spend any attorney fees if they win, by donating that money to a local animal shelter.
“We’re going to take that money and use it to benefit the people that reside here,” Easley Jr. said. “So we do not intend on a bunch of lawyers getting rich on this case.”
As of late Tuesday afternoon, both ODOT and OTA said they had not been served with the lawsuit yet.
OTA added it “will be thoroughly reviewing the claims in the lawsuit.”
Taylor points to Muskogee for precedent, where there is a stretch of free road serving the city, in between two sections of the Muskogee Turnpike.
He said that concept was used to help negotiate the law he helped put in place for Claremore.
Toll rates for the Will Rogers turnpike can be found at PikePass.com
