By ballot box or in the courtroom, Oklahomans across the state are hoping to improve the landscapes of their communities.
In McAlester, voters will have the opportunity Tuesday to approve a bond package for upgrades to McAlester Public Schools’ athletic and academic facilities, while Marshall County residents will vote in November on whether to approve a series of TIF districts for development of a long-proposed project along Lake Texoma.
Meanwhile, in Stillwater, a homeowner’s association from the city’s outskirts is suing Google after a new data center has, in their words, had a “devastating cost” to their local ecosystem. Google, of course, already has broader issues on its plate.
In other courtroom news, criminal charges against former Ringling football coach Phil Koons have been dropped nearly two years after he was accused of bullying and harassing his student-athletes, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma has reached a consent decree with Canadian County over the county’s bail practices.
Read about all of that, and more, in this roundup.
McAlester Public Schools asking voters to pass $41 million bond
Voters in the McAlester Public Schools District will head to the polls Tuesday to decide a bond proposal seeking more than $41 million for a slate of projects.
MPS leaders have dubbed the initiative “Investing in Our Herd,” which calls for athletic facility investments, along with construction of new buildings for agriculture education, STEM and a student training and wellness center.
If Tuesday’s ballot item receives 60 percent support, property owners within the MPS district will repay the bonds over 18 years with a 14 percent increase in property taxes, according to a chart on the district’s website. While September elections typically have low turnout, this year’s dynamics could motivate some voters.
In June, State Auditor & Inspector Cindy Byrd released a forensic audit ordered by a successful initiative petition from 2020. The audit, whose original requester is now deceased, found a pair of transparency concerns and a larger issue regarding a sales tax the City of McAlester collected for education from 2003 to 2018. As the tax ended in FY 2018, the city made payments to the school district based on estimated costs as opposed to final costs.
“The school district was asked to provide invoices associated with the $2,522,049.17. Invoices provided could only account for $1,485,099.64 in documented expenditures,” auditors wrote. “The usage of the remaining $1,036,949.53 could not be verified.”
In putting together Tuesday’s bond package, MPS athletic director James Singleton told the McAlester News-Capital he worked with officials from the City of McAlester to obtain enough improvements to help sporting events hosted by the district bring sales tax dollars to the city.
A Facebook post from MPS used three events from 2025 to make the argument. Between a regional track meet, an area basketball tournament and an area girls wrestling tournament, 10,500 people visited McAlester and made an economic impact of nearly $1 million, with $38,907 of sales tax revenue collected.
“You would hope just seeing that data would reinforce what we’re wanting to do,” Singleton told the News-Capital. “This money coming into our community is extra tax money, and that extra tax money can be used for city municipalities and things they need to get fixed as well. To me, it’s a win-win for everybody.”
Charge against Phil Koons dropped, attorney criticizes student
During a press conference addressing the dismissal of the criminal case against former high school principal and football coach Philip Koons, attorney Shelby Shelton said his client is relieved, and he laid blame for the controversy at the feet of a Ringling student.
On Aug. 29, Jefferson County District Attorney Jason Hicks dismissed a misdemeanor charge of outraging public decency against Koons, who was accused of verbal and physical abuse toward athletes. While a jury trial had been scheduled to start Sept. 15, Hicks moved for dismissal with prejudice, meaning the criminal charge cannot be refiled. Hicks dismissed the charge “in the furtherance of justice after review of civil depositions,” according to the filing.
“This case has always been about accountability. Unfortunately, they’re trying to hold the wrong person accountable,” Shelton said. “What started this case was a young person making a threat toward administration. After that, they have been trying to ruin a man’s career.”
The charges originated from allegations that Koons bullied and abused players. Shelton called depositions of the accusers questionable.
“Personally, I’m privy to the [Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation] reports. I had them transcribed, I watched them as part of the evidence. I’m also privy to the depositions that their statements were inconsistent,” Shelton said. “That is putting it as politely as I possibly can. Inconsistent at best. And out of the 50 to 70 kids interviewed, there was one group of family, one group that statements all matched, almost like it was written by a civil attorney instead of their own words.”
Koons’ hiring at Ringling spurred controversy in the wake of past allegations when Koons coached in Tuttle and Clinton, In 2013, KFOR had reported that a parent said their child wanted to commit suicide because of Koons.
A federal lawsuit filed last year in the Western District of Oklahoma against Koons, two of his sons, Ringling Public Schools and Superintendent Kent Southward, is moving forward. The plaintiffs, nine current or former Ringling High School male students, allege civil rights violations, gross negligence and the intentional infliction of emotion distress.
“Plaintiffs were physically, mentally, sexually, and/or emotionally abused by Kent Southward, Philip Koons, Sterling Koons and Cooper Koons and the District’s failure to adequately respond to Koons’s abusive behavior and inappropriate misconduct,” the plaintiff’s amended petition alleged last summer.
On Friday, the plaintiffs filed witness and exhibit lists that allege a violation of the school’s sexual harassment policy by Southward and reference “Phil Koons’ desire to pursue criminal charges against the students who made accusations of abuse.” The witness list also states that the brother and son of legendary Ringling football coach Rick Gandy have spoken against Koons and in support of the plaintiffs.
Stillwater HOA sues Google over pollution concerns
In Stillwater, a homeowners association is suing Google over claims construction of a new data center has “led to a torrent of red mud and silt” flowing into their neighborhood.
According to reporting from Stillwater News Press editor in chief Beau Simmons, the Park View Estates Homeowners Association filed a civil suit Aug. 19 in Payne County District Court. Google subsidiary Kipper, LLC was named as a defendant, along with Manhattan Construction Group, engineering firm Olsson Inc. and civil contractor Emery Sapp & Sons.
Stillwater residents approved the data center last November. The city touted economic opportunities associated with the $3 billion project, including new permanent jobs and “community partnership” with Oklahoma State University, Stillwater Public Schools and Meridian Technology Center.
“While the construction of the Google Data Center promises significant benefits for Stillwater and Payne County, that progress has come at a devastating cost to this long-established neighborhood-located directly next to the construction site,” the petition reads. “For over 50 years, Park View Estates was known for its pristine blue ponds, winding creeks, abundant wildlife and outdoor recreational opportunities. Today, those same waters have been transformed into muddy, red, stagnant pools filled with dead and decaying fish. The once-thriving wildlife has vanished, replaced only by scavenging turkey vultures.
“The natural beauty and outdoor enjoyment that defined the neighborhood are gone.”
Data centers have drawn criticism across the county for their intense water and energy demands. Before November’s vote, some Stillwegians expressed concern the data center would cause noise and light pollution.
“The external sound from standard operations at the data centers will not exceed 65 dBA at any receiving property line, which is lower than the industry standard for U.S. Light Industrial Zoning,” the city reported in response to those fears. “The city has 50 [millions of gallons per day] of daily water rights from Kaw Lake (current average 7 [millions of gallons per day], peak day 14 [millions of gallons per day]). The Economic Development Agreement (EDA) will protect the City’s current capacity needs to allow for additional growth and/or other projects.”
Remedies ordered in ‘Google search monopoly’ case
A federal judge has ordered that Google “will be barred from entering or maintaining exclusive contracts relating to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice announcement of the order last week.
“The court’s ruling today recognizes the need for remedies that will pry open the market for general search services, which has been frozen in place for over a decade,” the DOJ’s press release stated. “The ruling also recognizes the need to prevent Google from using the same anticompetitive tactics for its GenAI products as it used to monopolize the search market, and the remedies will reach GenAI technologies and companies.”
The DOJ filed the case in October 2020 and was ultimately joined by 49 states, two territories and the District of Columbia. The DOJ’s release outlined actions ordered by the court:
Google will be barred from entering or maintaining exclusive contracts relating to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app. Google cannot enter or maintain agreements that (1) condition the licensing of any Google application on the distribution, preloading, or placement of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app anywhere on a device; (2) condition the receipt of revenue share payments for the placement of one Google application on the placement of another Google application; or (3) condition the receipt of revenue share payments on maintaining Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app on any device, browser, or search access point for more than one year; or (4) prohibit any partner from simultaneously distributing any other GSE, browser, or GenAI product.
In addition, Google will have to make certain search index and user-interaction data available to certain competitors. Google will also be required to offer certain competitors search and search text ads syndication services, which will open up the market by enabling rivals and potential rivals to deliver high-quality search results and ads and compete with Google as they develop their own capacity.
In a statement posted to Blog.Google, the company’s leadership said the decision “recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information.”
“This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want. That’s why we disagree so strongly with the Court’s initial decision in August 2024 on liability,” the anonymous statement read. “Now the court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google services, and will require us to share Search data with rivals. We have concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely. The court did recognize that divesting Chrome and Android would have gone beyond the case’s focus on search distribution, and would have harmed consumers and our partners.”
Canadian County enters consent decree over bail practices
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma and the law firm Covington and Burling LLP announced they have reached a settlement agreement with Canadian County to settle a lawsuit over the county’s bail practices.
When a person is charged with a crime, that person is usually taken into state custody. However, since defendants are presumed innocent until convicted, they are normally entitled to pre-trial release. In order to ensure a defendant actually attends court, courts may require a bond to be paid before they are released. If the defendant attends their court dates, the bond is usually returned.
Lawyers brought a class-action lawsuit in 2019 arguing Canadian County’s bail practices violated due process, equal protection and the right to counsel. After six years of litigation, the parties appear to have settled the dispute with a consent decree.
While it still must be approved by the federal judge handling the case — Judge Jodi Dishman reassigned the case Friday to Judge Shon T. Erwin — the proposed decree features several agreement terms:
- Canadian County will change its charging deadline for misdemeanors from 10 days to five days;
- Canadian County will change its charging deadline for nonviolent felonies from 10 days to seven days;
- The Canadian County Sheriff’s Office will provide individuals booked into the Canadian County Detention Center with a one-page notice on the topic of bail;
- The Canadian County Sheriff’s Office will provide individuals booked into the Canadian County Detention Center with a financial affidavit they may fill out and submit to the court;
- The Canadian County Sheriff’s Office will provide individuals booked into the Canadian County Detention Center with an application for court-appointed counsel through the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System;
- Canadian County Court judges will use a “bail determination order form” when they grant bond and will follow the 1998 Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals decision in Brill v. Gurich when denying bond;
- The Canadian County District Court will submit quarterly reports on the status of the consent decree; and
- Excluding exigent circumstances, defendants will receive a bail determination within 72 hours of booking.
If approved, the decision will add some new paperwork to Canadian County’s legal system, but it would provide better legal protections and support for defendants in one of Oklahoma’s largest counties, which shares a judicial district with Oklahoma County.
Steve Harpe resigns as DOC director
Oklahoma Department of Corrections executive director Steven Harpe will step down from leading the state’s prison system Sept. 30 and return to the private sector.
Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed Harpe in 2022 to run the DOC after initially hiring him in 2019 to be deputy director of technology — and then executive director — of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services. Stitt praised Harpe’s time as executive director in a press release Aug. 27.
“Director Harpe’s leadership transformed the culture at ODOC, making the agency stronger and better prepared to fulfill its mission of protecting Oklahomans and supporting rehabilitation,” Stitt said. “I’m grateful for his service to our state and wish him the very best as he returns to the private sector.”
The press release credits Harpe with working to modernize the department and foster a more rehabilitation-focused approach, although he has been criticized for lacking a corrections background, for an accidental firearm discharge at his office and by leaders of a corrections workers association.
“I’m extremely proud of my time with the ODOC and the state of Oklahoma,” Harpe said in the release. “Working with the dedicated employees at the agency and interacting with the inmates, learning their stories, is an experience I will cherish forever. I know the agency will continue to innovate and be at the forefront of modernizing the corrections profession.”
Marshall County to decide future of Pointe Vista project
Residents in Marshall County will soon have the opportunity to vote on establishing $1 billion worth of tax increment financing districts to kickstart a project nearly 20 years in the making.
The proposed TIF is being placed on a Nov. 18 ballot for residents of Marshall County to decide the future of Pointe Vista, a 2,700-acre, mixed-use development that would be located on 19 miles of Lake Texoma shoreline in southern Oklahoma between Kingston and Durant
Supporters of the project garnered enough signatures on a petition to put the TIF to a vote, according to reporting from KXII. The petition came after Marshall County commissioners declined to pass a resolution calling for a vote in June.
The Pointe Vista project is proposed to be anchored by a Hard Rock casino and convention center, along with 2,000 homes and rental properties, a marina, retail outlets, a waterpark and other amenities.
According to the project plan, a total of six TIF districts would be established, with each having a different start date as the overall project progresses. Tax increment financing allows a certain amount of a tax revenue to be captured within a designated district for specified projects for a period of up to 25 years. In Pointe Vista’s case, sales, lodging and property taxes will all be retained by the series of TIF districts, and each district has a different formula funding and designation.
Grant Speakes, president of the Oklahoma City-based Pointe Vista Development, LLC, told KTEN in July the TIFs “will collect some $1.2 billion” without raising taxes on Marshall County residents. The $1.2 billion price tag was also shown in slideshows during public hearings held in May.
“Unfortunately, there’s not enough infrastructure to support the development, and rather than to be a drain on resources, we want to be a good neighbor, we want to greatly improve the area and the location,” Speakes explained to KTEN.
Developers estimate that county services and the Kingston Public School District will benefit from more than $150 million in additional property taxes over the life of the TIF districts, according to the project plan.
Since purchasing the property from the state of Oklahoma in 2006, the project’s developers have faced several hurdles, including economic difficulties, a pandemic, and lawsuits from sellers and a state board for failing to meet project deadlines. Pointe Vista partner Aubrey McClendon died in a car wreck one day after being indicted in 2016, and partner Mark Fisher’s Chaparrel Energy declared bankruptcy later that year.
In a 2015 settlement with the Oklahoma Commissioners of the Land Office, a portion of the land was returned to the state. The 50 acres were then sold to the Chickasaw Nation in 2016 for about $4.2 million. The land has since become the site of West Bay Casino and Resort on a western edge of Lake Texoma.
A ribbon cutting for the Pointe Vista project occurred in 2009, with a groundbreaking happening in 2021.
Langston reveals cooperative extension expansion details
After receiving an additional $10 million from the Oklahoma Legislature ahead of the 2025-2026 academic year, Langston University officials have announced plans to expand the institution’s Cooperative Extension and Outreach Program to two more counties, while increasing program efforts in the 46 counties it already serves.
Marking the second consecutive year Oklahoma’s only Historically Black College and University received additional state money, Langston will use $5.5 million of Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry funding to provide resources in “areas ranging from family and youth development to a wide range of food and agricultural support.”
With the new funding, Langston will begin serving residents of Woodward and Johnston counties through the cooperative extension.
“Langston University is grateful for its enhanced funding,” said Wesley Whittaker, dean of the Sherman Lewis School of Agriculture and Applied Sciences. “Consumers, producers and industry professionals recognize that funding for agricultural extension and research in Oklahoma creates value on many levels. It helps to develop new revenue streams for farmers and ranchers, expand value-added products, encourage diversified agricultural practices and strengthen the competitiveness of Oklahoma agriculture.”
In an Aug. 18 press release, members of Langston’s communications team said the enhanced resources and broadening of existing initiatives are intended to spur:
- An increased number and multiplicity of food preservation courses;
- Expanded fiber arts programming;
- A broadened youth STEM curriculum and engagement with schools and other organizations;
- Establishment and support of new 4-H clubs;
- Expansion of Langston’s goat production and “related value-added product development programs”;
- Growth of Langston’s apiculture — or beekeeping — supports and education, including “the development of a formal training curriculum for beekeepers”;
- Expanded horticulture and precision agriculture education and outreach;
- Stronger collaboration with and support for community-based organizations;
- Continued adult and youth nutrition education support programs; and
- “A new initiative to provide adult and youth programming with Oklahoma City Park.”
With the money received over the last two legislative sessions, Langston University President Ruth Ray Jackson said Langston’s first priority is expanding current program offerings, but she emphasized that planning for future programming efforts is also underway.
“Some work that we’re doing already is in the field of biotechnology, and so one of the longer term goals is to really have a biotech facility on our campus that will allow us to have a better integration of disciplines across the campus,” Jackson said Aug. 27. “There’s also exciting work happening between agriculture and biology and agriculture and chemistry, and what we envision is really having a facility that allows us to bring all of those scientists together, all of those students together, and really do some incredible things.”
Sanders pushes back on broadband grant ‘return’ rhetoric
The executive director of the Oklahoma Broadband Office is pushing back on suggestions that the agency is returning $225 million in federal Broadband Equity and Access Deployment funding.
“It is not a fact that we are sending money back, because that money never existed. Grants do not work that way. Grants are a reimbursement-type process,” OBO executive director Mike Sanders told NonDoc after the Broadband Governing Board’s most recent meeting Aug. 28.
In its revised Aug. 25 “final proposal” submitted for federal approval, Sanders’ office referred to the $225 million not being deployed as coming in “under budget.” According to Sanders, OBO’s funding needs shifted because of federal policy changes, which means the full $797 million of BEAD funding for which Oklahoma received preliminary approval in August 2024 would not be accessed.
“We’re following the rules,” Sanders said. “It’s not in our wheelhouse.”
Launched under the Biden administration, the BEAD program aims to connect households to high-speed internet. Funding for the program is dispersed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. On June 6, NTIA published a policy notice instructing “eligible entities” to “obtain the greatest value” and shift away from a Biden-era approach that prioritized fiber-based connections to a “technology neutral” approach that puts wireless and satellite services on the same playing field as fiber, despite wide recognition that fiber is a more reliable option.
“What happens is, when the original allocation was sent out, it was based purely 100 percent on fiber,” Sanders said. “Now, when you add other types of technology, that lowered the cost, so instead of doing everything fiber, which is more costly, we’re doing and including other forms of technology, which lowers the cost and saves the taxpayer money.”
Sanders said the changes yielded nearly 30 percent in overall savings. That means the OBO’s final BEAD proposal will provisionally award only $550 million to internet service providers. That funding will be coupled with $198 million in matching investments from those ISPs.
