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Follow TURFBig money wants new govt agency just for PPPs
Texas State Representative Carl Isett already introduced a bill, HB 1815, in the last legislative session to do this very thing - create a whole state agency that does nothing but write contracts that sell-off Texas roads to Wall Street in sweetheart deals. This is an abomination for taxpayers and anyone who cares about maintaining control of our public infrastructure. It's obvious the big money wants to control our infrastructure through these toll road monopolies, and we have far too many politicians willing to sell-out Texans to give it to them.
Calls Come for 'Programmatic’ P3 Approach
By Audrey Dutton
Bond Buyer
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — Market participants are pushing for states or the federal government to take a “programmatic” rather than a piecemeal or project-by-project approach to financing infrastructure through public-private partnerships.
But states may be better equipped than the federal government to assemble a P3 program, and the Georgia Department of Transportation’s newly launched multi-project P3 initiative could provide a case study, some said last week at The Bond Buyer’s 10th annual Transportation Finance/P3 conference in Dallas.
“Right now it’s too fractured” in the P3-financed infrastructure sector, Chee Mee Hu, managing director for Moody’s Investors Service, said during an interview last week, adding, “It’s almost opportunistic rather than programmatic” how P3s are evolving now in the U.S.
State departments of transportation currently have to do “a lot of footwork” to put together P3 deals and are essentially reinventing the wheel for each project-based partnership, she said.
“One thing we don’t have in a rational way are P3 proponents,” Hu said. “In Canada, they have provincial groups” that focus on P3 programs. The U.S. needs “some agency at the state or federal level” to act as a clearinghouse or design a centralized program for P3s, she said.
Read the rest of the story here.