Back in June, the Oklahoma City Council voted to annex Midtown into the Downtown business improvement district, or BID.
The marketing, street furnishing, and the maintenance of the neighborhood will be overseen by the civic and development group Downtown Oklahoma City, Incorporated.
“The businesses in the area are assessed $47 per $10,000 value of their building,” said The Journal Record’s managing editor Adam Brooks. “And that goes to infrastructure. There's also a little bit of assessment for street frontage, that sort of thing.”
But now, several property owners are taking City Hall to court over that annexation attempt, according to Journal Record reporter Brian Brus:
The nine plaintiffs that filed a lawsuit in the Oklahoma County District Court allege that they were denied due process when the council adopted an expanded tax assessment roll for the district in September. The assessment constitutes the taking of property without just compensation, a constitutional violation of their rights, according to the document filed by attorney J. Kelly Work. Further, city officials failed to adequately notify the plaintiffs of hearings leading up to the council’s actions, the plaintiffs claim. Officials also refused to allow objections at those meetings. “There is no rational basis for the determination made by the governing body,” according to the lawsuit. “The plaintiffs will receive no benefit from the improvements and purposes for which the proposed assessment is laid.”
"At this week's council meeting, the council members met in private executive session to discuss this lawsuit,” Brooks said. “They adjourned the city council meeting right after that. And the city attorney said that he couldn't discuss the litigation, so we're not exactly clear what's going on with it.”
Brooks said the BID fees are supposed to be assessed at the end of October, and are paid out monthly. He expects some businesses won’t pay while the court case goes on, with a settlement later.
“There should be some hearings about whether the case can go through,” Brooks said. “Overall, Midtown pays in about $100,000 a year, and we expect that to continue.”
Revisited Rate Case
On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission will consider a request by AT&T to drop a nearly 30-year-old rate case that could lead to a $16 billion refund for customers in Oklahoma if the original decision is changed.
“In the late 1980s there was a federal tax change, and that gave AT&T $30 million more,” Brooks said. “Now that was on a 2-1 vote by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, but Commissioner Bill Hopkins was later convicted of taking a $15,000 bribe in the case.”
The Journal Record’s Sarah Terry-Cobo reports the Oklahoma Supreme Court has rejected similar filings six times, and the Corporation Commission has also declined to reconsider the issue - most recently in 2003. Previously, some of those cases were brought by Bob Anthony, who’s now a Corporation Commissioner. At the time, two Oklahoma attorneys general told Anthony to stop filing cases. Brooks says new plaintiffs, including Edmond Police Chief Bob Ricks, appears to be the main difference now.
“He investigated the original bribery for the FBI, who says that vote should be invalidated, and the Oklahoma Corporation Commission should take it up again,” Brooks said.
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