CLAREMORE, Okla. — A Rogers County District Court judge on Wednesday found that the Lead-Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust violated the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act when it awarded a $2.1 million contract in February for demolishing 156 houses in Cardin and Picher.

Because the law was violated, Presiding Judge J. Dwayne Steidley deemed the contract null and void. The trust, unless it decides to appeal the judge’s decision, will have to rebid the project in a manner that complies with the open-meetings law.

Mark Osborn, of Miami, chairman of the trust, said through an office spokeswoman that he had no comment on the court’s decision.

Catoosa company

The attorney representing the plaintiff, DT Specialized Services, of Catoosa, which submitted a bid that was much lower than the winning bid, asked the court for sanctions against the trust and the Oklahoma attorney general’s office for not providing to him bid information documents that are part of the public record.

The attorney, Terry O’Donnell, of Tulsa, said the trust decided to select a Miami company, Stone’s Backhoe, Dozer and Trucking, after what it said was “an extensive review of the bids.” That language, he said, appears on the official website for the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, which is overseeing the buyout at Picher and Cardin.

O’Donnell said he needed to see the bid documents, which are public records, that were extensively reviewed by the trust in order to prepare for Wednesday’s hearing.

O’Donnell said he had not seen such “stonewalling delays and a refusal to give public documents” in his 21 years as a lawyer.

“These are public documents,” he said. “We did not receive any information until Tuesday.”

At that time, he said, he received an 11-page document from Sherry Todd, assistant attorney general, that “provided no information about the bid process. What is equally disturbing is that the trust had a hearing last night (Tuesday) in an attempt to go back and rectify what it did.”

Too little, too late

Todd, who represented the trust at Wednesday’s hearing, said the trust did try to rectify its mistake during a meeting Tuesday night. Steidley said that action was too little, too late.

Todd said Scott Boughton, the lead attorney for the trust, was out of the state last week when she received the request for the bid documents. She said she needed to consult with him and other staff attorneys to make sure she did not do anything to compromise the bid procedure.

She told Steidley that he needed to look at the “totality of the circumstances.” She said there was no evidence to support the allegation of stonewalling. She said DT Specialized Services did not receive the contract because its bid was not responsive to the bid specifications spelled out by the trust.

“They (the trust) chose the best value among the responsive bidders,” she said.

After the hearing, David McAfee, vice president of DT Specialized Services, said that in his 15 years of bidding contracts, he had never submitted a bid that was not responsive to the specifications.

He said he finds it odd that three of the four companies that bid on the contract are Oklahoma companies that are known for their ability to provide demolition services. He said the trust chose a local company that does not specialize in demolition and gave it a contract that was higher than the lowest bid.

DT Specialized Services submitted a bid of $558,988. Midwest Wrecking submitted a bid of $861,671. K&N Wrecking submitted a bid of $1,447,971.

“We challenged this because these are taxpayer dollars that they are spending,” McAfee said.

Order sought

DT Specialized Services filed suit against the trust on April 22, asking that a temporary restraining order be issued to enjoin the trust and to prevent the contractor from doing further demolition work.

On April 27, Judge Robert Reavis, in Ottawa County District Court, issued a temporary restraining order, saying the plaintiff had shown that the trust had failed to comply with the open-meetings law “by failing to properly post notice, agenda, or conduct any forum ... at which the bids received by the defendants were analyzed, considered, discussed or acted upon.”

Reavis said the trust “failed to publicly cast and record the votes of each participating member or maintain records of such proceeding.”

Reavis issued the restraining order and set the date of Wednesday’s hearing on whether his order should be made into a temporary injunction. After issuing the order, Reavis recused himself. That put the matter in Steidley’s court.

This is the second time Steidley has heard a lawsuit against the trust for alleged violations of the state open-meetings law. Last fall, Steidley sided with the trust’s lawyer, Boughton, who said the trust operated within the boundaries of the statute that created it, and that it did not violate the open-meetings law when it invited buyout contractors and a state employee into closed-door sessions to decide how much money property owners in Picher and Cardin would receive from the trust for their properties in the federal buyout of the site.

Steidley’s decision in that case was appealed and is being reviewed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. A ruling in that case could come at any time.

Wednesday’s decision has no direct impact on a related lawsuit in Tulsa County that involves the trust’s primary appraisal companies, Cinnabar and Van Tuyl, and 10 insurance companies that worked with the appraisal companies after the May 10, 2008, tornado.

About 210 former residents of Picher and Cardin are seeking financial relief, alleging that the trust, the appraisal companies and the insurance companies lowballed the value of their properties.

Trust officials have previously said that the majority of Picher’s relocated residents received fair deals or they would not have accepted the buyout offers from the trust.





Trust background



The Lead-Impacted Communities Relocation Assistance Trust was created by the Oklahoma Legislature to oversee the federal buyout of residential and commercial property in the former lead and zinc mining field. The Tar Creek Superfund Site is contaminated by acidic mine water and mountains of mining waste called chat, and faces a risk of cave-ins.