AG’s legal opinion forces OK transportation secretary, OTA director to resign positions

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – A legal opinion issued by Oklahoma’s Attorney General on Wednesday forced Tim Gatz to resign his roles as Oklahoma Secretary of Transportation and executive director of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority.

Gatz first became executive director of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority (OTA) in 2016.

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In 2019, Governor Kevin Stitt appointed him to become the director of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT).

When Gatz accepted that appointment, he did not step down from his role with the OTA and continued to serve as the leader of both agencies.

Later in 2019, Stitt appointed Gatz to serve as Oklahoma’s Secretary of Transportation—an executive cabinet position. At that time, Gatz again did not step down from his roles leading the OTA and ODOT, continuing to serve in all three capacities.

On Wednesday, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued a legal opinion that declared Gatz’s serving in all three roles simultaneously was a violation of Oklahoma’s “dual office holding prohibition for a single individual to serve simultaneously in any two or more” roles leading certain state agencies.

“If a state officer enters upon the duties of a second office in violation of the dual office holding prohibition, it operates as a vacation of the first office,” Drummond wrote in his opinion. “The vacation of the first office is self executing and notwithstanding the person’s intention of continuing to hold the first office.”

Under that legal interpretation, Drummond argued Gatz should have stepped down from his role with the OTA when he accepted his role with ODOT in 2019, and he should have stepped down from that role with ODOT when he accepted his role as Secretary of Transportation.

OTA and ODOT released a joint statement announcing Gatz’s resignation from two of those roles shortly after Drummond released his opinion Wednesday afternoon.

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“The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority and Oklahoma Department of Transportation acknowledge Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s opinion on the prohibition against dual office holding and its effect on Tim Gatz’s service as Secretary of Transportation and as executive director of OTA and ODOT,” the statement said. “At issue is whether state statute allows one person to serve in all three executive roles. While Gatz does not take a position on the legal analysis in the opinion, effective immediately, Gatz has resigned his position as the secretary of transportation and has been reappointed as executive director of ODOT. The opinion operates as an effective resignation of his role as the executive director of OTA”

Drummond issued the opinion in response to a request from State Sen. Mary Boren (D-Norman). Boren told News 4 her constituents asked her to submit the request, and she was pleased with Drummond’s findings.

“It looks funny to have two large agencies, the ODOT and OTA, talking to each other through one person and one person is signing off on both sides of it,” Boren said. “My constituents were correct that what was happening was illegal and it shouldn’t have been happening.”

Boren’s Senate district includes a portion of the Norman area the OTA announced it planned to build several new turnpikes as part of its Access Oklahoma Plan—which Gatz oversaw in his role with the OTA.

The proposed turnpikes have received large opposition from people living near the routes.

Residents formed the group ‘PikeOff OTA’ in response.

“[ODOT and OTA] are, by law, two separate agencies,” said Randy Carter with PikeOff OTA. “And I think it’s ripe for inappropriate activity to occur.”

PikeOff has taken legal action challenging the validity and legality of the Access Oklahoma plan. Ultimately, courts allowed the project to move forward.

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The first Access Oklahoma project is expected to break ground on Thursday.

In his legal opinion Wednesday, Drummond clarified that even though Gatz should not have legally held all three positions at once, any decisions he made and signed off on while in those positions are still valid.

Carter says that doesn’t mean PikeOff is done fighting to oppose the proposed turnpikes near Norman.

“We’re still we’re still in the game,” Carter said. “And we’re plugging away, trying to bring more accountability”

Public records uncovered by News 4’s Spencer Humphrey last year—prior to him joining News 4—revealed Gatz signed off on and oversaw planning of the controversial Gilcrease Expressway turnpike project in the Berryhill area of western Tulsa County.

The project effectively converted an existing, free-to-drive portion of the expressway—between 41st and 51st Street in Tulsa County—into a toll road when the OTA opened a new extension of the expressway from 41st to U.S. 412 in 2022.

“Somewhere it morphed into a turnpike versus just a feasible road to get to and from work to home,” said Melissa Myers, who lives near the Gilcrease Expressway and has been vocal in opposing the new toll.

Plans for the Gilcrease Expressway date back to the 1950s when Tulsa area leaders planned for it to be an outer loop highway around Tulsa.

Portions of the loop were built through city and state funds in the decades following, and operated as free roads. That included the portion between 51st and 41st.

The city and county planned to fund construction of the remaining unbuilt portion of the Gilcrease loop between 41st Street and U.S. 412, and operate it as a free road—until 2017 when they brought in the OTA, citing funding challenges.

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Ultimately, the OTA oversaw design and construction of the project as part unique partnership between the OTA, ODOT, the City of Tulsa, Tulsa County and the Indian Nations Council of Governments (INCOG).

Unlike most OTA projects funded through bond money, the OTA funded their portion of the Gilcrease project through a federal TIFIA loan.

Right-of-way for the project had previously been purchased by the City of Tulsa and Tulsa County.

Leaders from the OTA, ODOT, Tulsa County, INCOG and the City of Tulsa formed a task force they named the ‘Gilcrease Working Group’ as they made decisions together about the project. Gatz served on the working group as a representative for both the OTA and ODOT.

The public records uncovered last year included partnership and funding agreements between ODOT and the OTA for the Gilcrease project—in which Gatz signed off as the representative party for both agencies.

The records also included an email sent to Gilcrease Working Group members by an ODOT employee in 2018.

It suggested they disclose their plans to toll the existing portion of the Gilcrease Expressway on flyers advertising an informational meeting about the project. The public records uncovered showed the flyers ultimately did not include that information.

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“There has to be checks and balances,” Myers said. “One man was over multiple areas. That’s not good and that has conflict of interest written all over it.”

The OTA’s board will now begin the process to find and hire a new director for their agency.

It will be Governor Stitt’s job to find and appoint a new Secretary of Transportation.

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