| The State Auditor & Inspector responded to a request of the 22nd District Attorney's office, today. DA Paul Smith of Ada had asked the Auditor to look into 8 county Commission's claims that funds designated for their roads and bridges were removed. We posted that news on Sunday. In Short, Jones said that the legislature did it. The Oklahoma Dept. of Transportation (ODOT) was quick to jump it and chastise the DA for even hinting that something untoward had occurred. The short explanation is that the funds never belonged to the counties, even though they were designated. The funds were still the property of the state and the legislature evidently has the right to raid any agency funds (except TSET, School Land Trust, and a few other 'sacred cows'). This doesn't sit well with many County Commissions. Marven Goodman is the Chairman of the Logan County Commission. By his account, ODOT has a way of tacking on fees to County road & bridge projects. Here's how he explains it; |  |
 Marven Goodman - Logan County Commission Chair "There is a specific area of the CIRB funds audit by Mr. Jones that we would be particularly interested in seeing. There are many County Commissioners asking about ODOT benefiting from "holding" road and bridge funding for the counties. ODOT says that they don't directly receive any funding from the CIRB fund account. Similarly, a person who eats fried chicken can say they don't directly kill any chickens. In the fine print of every construction agreement between ODOT and a county there are "generic statements" of unspecified project cost allowing ODOT to charge the counties between 6 & 15% of the total project cost for "inspection" and "management" fees. These fees are tacked on to any construction bid received from contractors and paid from county CIRB funds directly to ODOT. That amounts to somewhere between 15-20 million dollars a year that ODOT receives off the top of all county projects paid for by CIRB funds." |  |
