The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has launched an investigation into a $10 million-a-year contract for a new juvenile facility awarded to an Ada group working with a lobbyist romantically linked to a state senator.

The contract was to be signed Monday, but was delayed after The Oklahoman reported Republican state Sen. Harry Coates and lobbyist Haley Atwood were having an extramarital affair and Coates helped steer the contract to Ada Youth Academy Authority. Neither Coates, 60, nor Atwood, 29, would comment on the alleged relationship.

The attorney general’s office decided to launch the probe after new information surfaced Monday following a meeting between Senate Pro Tem-elect Brian Bingman and First Assistant Attorney General Tom Gruber.

“They presented us with some paperwork that we had not previously seen,” said Charlie Price, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office.

Neither Price nor Bingman would elaborate on what new details had emerged.

Brian Costello, chief operating officer and president of Avalon Correctional Services of Oklahoma City, said previously the move to delay the contract was the right one.

Avalon would have been builder for the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs facility had Hennessey won the bid for the project.

Failed bidders have alleged Coates, Atwood and Office of Juvenile Affairs Director Gene Christian rigged the bidding process to favor Atwood’s client, private juvenile academy operator Rite of Passage. It was selected by Ada Youth Academy Authority to operate the facility. The three deny wrongdoing.

Coates, R-Seminole, told The Oklahoman he welcomes scrutiny of the bidding process because “there were no shenanigans.” His wife told the newspaper he told her about the affair.

The state Central Services Department evaluated five bids for the contract.

Christian last month announced intentions to award the contract to Ada Youth Academy Authority, which had retained Rite of Passage to operate a new 144-bed private juvenile academy in Ada.

Before being hired as a consultant by Rite of Passage, Atwood was hired as a lobbyist with the architect chosen to design Ada’s proposed Rite of Passage academy.

Christian, Coates, Atwood and other legislators visited a Rite of Passage academy in Colorado while discussions were under way about building a juvenile center in Oklahoma, the newspaper reported.

The Office of Juvenile Affairs’ request for proposals asked for maximum-security beds at the new juvenile center, though the Rite of Passage academy in Ada would be a campus-like setting with no secure beds.

The Ada group also proposed adding 56 secure beds to an existing juvenile center on state land in Tecumseh.

Failed bidders have said the Rite of Passage academy in Ada is unnecessary because it isn’t what was requested.

A new juvenile center is needed because the problematic L.E. Rader Center in Sand Springs is expected to close soon. Rader has maximum-security beds.

Costello also objected because the Ada proposal did not call for secure beds. Avalon had submitted a bid to build a 120-bed, 40-acre secure facility just outside Hennessey.

“The only solution in my mind is, they have to start from scratch,” Costello said last week. “They have to get rid of the process from this point, put out a new (request for proposals), clearly defining the requirements (for the facility), then have an open and fair process.

“Up to this point it has not been an open and fair process, in my opinion.”

Wakita also had submitted a bid for the project.

CMSWillowbrook Total Construction Services of Chickasha and Oklahoma City would have built the facility in Wakita, and it would have been a faith-based facility run by Corrections Concepts Inc.



Staff writer Joe Malan and The Associated Press contributed to this story.