The Oklahoma Senate on Monday passed a bill to remove nearly two dozen Oklahoma Turnpike Authority projects from a legislatively approved list.
Senate Bill 80 would remove 21 of 35 projects that have not yet been built, including toll roads that were approved years ago.
Sen. Lisa Standridge, R-Norman, the Senate author, said the measure will improve transparency.
“What happened in my district was there was a turnpike that was proposed decades before and my constituents woke up one morning and to their surprise there’s going to be a turnpike through their backyards,” Standridge said.
She said the projects were approved decades ago by lawmakers, “before people bought land to build their homes on, before they moved in.”
While the bill would not impact the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority’s plans to build the toll road in the Norman area, she said it would keep approved projects to a minimum so there are not any more surprises.
Lawmakers in the future could restore or add more projects to the list, she said.
A toll road between Altus extending northwest to Sayre and a turnpike from Enid extending west to Woodward are among the projects that would be removed. Neither has been constructed or is part of OTA’s existing 15-year turnpike expansion plan that is expected to cost $8.2 billion.
Another project that would be removed is a proposed southern turnpike route through the state.
Sen. Brian Guthrie, R-Bixby, was successful in amending the measure to keep a proposed toll bridge in the Bixby area on the approved list.
The project has been on the books for 20 years and is a partnership between the cities of Bixby and Jenks and the Muscogee Creek Nation, Guthrie said.
Conversations about the project have recently “sparked back up and everybody’s excited about it,” Guthrie said.
Lisa Shearer-Salim, an OTA spokeswoman, said the Legislature determines the projects, while OTA looks at feasibility of them.
The bill does not have a huge impact on the OTA, but could impact communities in the future that were to be served by the projects, she said.
Shearer-Salim said it is up to the local community and lawmakers to determine what is needed for growth and to support infrastructure.
“We are ultimately fulfilling the mandate from the Legislature,” she said.
The mandate could change from time to time, she said.
The measure passed by a vote of 39-3 and heads to the House for consideration.
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