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Mitt Romney taps Bushies for transpo advice
Mitt Romney isn’t talking much about roads, runways or bridges — but behind the scenes he’s engaged a brain trust of transportation advisers who are.
The people advising him — though Romney’s campaign stresses that the team is informal — read like a who’s who of senior policymakers from President George W. Bush’s Department of Transportation. The agency at that time was heavily focused on privatization and maximum involvement of the private sector.
For the most part, the entire presidential campaign has been relatively quiet on the transportation front. Romney has talked about his desire to cut subsidies for Amtrak, and President Barack Obama has echoed his past positions — using the “peace dividend” to pay for more infrastructure investment, boosting transit and promoting high-speed rail.
"Large parts of our economy are corporate socialism, in which profits are privatized and losses socialized. And then there are the growing subsidie," Johnston says.
A dearth of competition in major U.S. industries and a government that’s policy making has been severely corrupted by moneyed interests has led to depressed wages and stifled innovation, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist says in a new book.
In essence, you’re being ripped off, and those responsible are taking everyone’s money while assuming very little risk.
David Cay Johnston was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for reporting the inequalities and loopholes that exist in the U.S. tax code and exposing corporate tax evasion. His latest work, The Fine Print: How Big companies Use “Plain English” to Rob You Blind, examines his findings about how the U.S. economy has strayed away from capitalism and into “corporate socialism,” where the free market, its engine of prosperity, has stalled.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) just announced that it inked a deal with Spanish toll operator, Cintra, for yet another toll project in North Texas -- this time on Interstate 35 W in Fort Worth. That brings the total toll projects in the hands of a single company in Dallas-Ft. Worth alone to five: Hwy 121, Hwy 183, I-820, I-635 and now I-35W. These chokepoints represent some of the most congested roads in the Metroplex, and four of the five were handed to Cintra without competitive bidding.
The LBJ project on I-635 is a standalone toll project, but the North Tarrant Express development agreement known as a public private partnership (P3) involves the other four highways, which were all awarded to Cintra in one master comprehensive development agreement with each highway subsequently negotiated using ‘facility agreements.’
By Ben Wear
Austin American Statesman - October 11, 2012
The southern 41 miles of the Texas 130 tollway will open on the afternoon of Oct. 24, according to a Facebook post Thursday from the company that built the four-lane road under a long-term lease with the Texas Department of Transportation.
The road, which runs from the southern end of the existing Texas 130 at Mustang Ridge to Interstate 10 near Seguin, will remain free to drive until Nov. 11, Seguin Mayor Betty Ann Matthies said in a video on the SH 130 Concession Company’s Facebook page. After that, it will cost cars and two-axle trucks about 15 cents a mile to drive the road, Matthies said. Larger trucks will pay up to five times that figure, depending on the number of axles.
At 15 cents a mile, the 41 miles will cost $6.17. The rates were set in a 2007 contract between TxDOT and the concession company, and are allowed to increase annually at a percentage tied to growth of the state’s gross domestic product.
There's nothing innovative about this toll road. It uses the same financing structure that brought us the subprime mortgage crisis -- a public private partnership where government teams up with private corporations in an arrangement that guarantees the private entity's profits. Solyndra was another. They use schemes like non-compete agreements that limit and even prohibit the expansion of free roads surrounding the tollway in order to guarantee congestion on the free lanes and drive more traffic to the toll road. So just as Solomon said, there's nothing new under the sun -- and corporate cronyism and corruption in government is certainly not 'innovative.'
If you are driving from the San Antonio area to a destination on Interstate 35 north of Austin, or vice versa, then the option of paying a toll to bypass the capital's traffic might be attractive. It might be especially attractive if you can legally travel 85 mph on a portion of the toll road.
That's the option drivers will have sometime in the next month or so, thanks to an innovative public-private partnership that will complete Texas 130 from I-35 near Georgetown to I-10 just east of Seguin.
Link to blog here.
Texas Tribune Festival 2012 talks Transportation & Trade
We're liveblogging this weekend from The Texas Tribune Festival's Trade & Transportation track, which includes panels on light rail in Texas, the future of trade and the upcoming legislative session.
Featured speakers include Phil Wilson, the executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation; Gordon Bethune, the former CEO of Continental Airlines; Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade; and Deirdre Delisi, the former chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission.
In a matter of weeks, a 41-mile stretch of toll road with the fastest speed limit in the country will open in Central Texas.
But truck drivers may steer clear of the new high-speed road, said John Esparza, president of the Texas Motor Transportation Association, which represents the trucking industry in Texas.
“It’s going to be a deterrent, yes,” Esparza said of the road’s 85 mph speed limit.
The Texas Department of Transportation has said it pursued a higher speed limit for the new portion of State Highway 130 from Austin to Seguin in part to entice drivers away from more congested highways. Agency officials have said engineering tests demonstrated that an 85-mph speed limit is safe for the new toll road.
By Ben Wear
Austin American Statesman, September 23, 2012
LOCKHART — Barbecue can only take a town so far.
This city's signature culinary product, of course, was featured prominently when about 250 local business and political leaders gathered recently for an "economic development summit." But the real subject of what organizers dubbed the "Race to Lockhart" was speed.
Speed in the form of an 85 mph Texas 130 tollway extension opening as soon as next month. And the potential speed of development, fed mainly by the tollway, in a quiet county of 38,000 up to now mostly bypassed by the Central Texas population boom.
Community leaders believe the four lanes of Texas 130 will spur growth — despite what is expected to be a charge of about 15 cents a mile to drive on it. The tollway, which will link Lockhart to Austin to the north and will provide a much faster route to San Antonio to the south, has drawn the attention of a handful of developers, but no dirt has turned yet.
By Michael Kleen
Rock River Times
September 19, 2012
Michael Kleen
By Michael Kleen
“Public-private partnership” has become the latest buzzword among the political class and its supporters.
Often used in combination with “economic development” (another favorite campaign slogan), public-private partnership conjures the rosy image of government and the private sector walking hand-in-hand toward a more prosperous future. More careful observers, however, see nothing more than a mask for cronyism and corruption. In truth, these partnerships may enrich a few, but they hardly ever yield the promised benefits for the public.
The “public-private” concept works in several ways: either government partners with private business to build and maintain public projects, or government invests in private business to foster the growth of certain industries, supposedly for the public good.
Rather than stay out of the marketplace, government officials use their influence and authority to grant special favors to their friends and colleagues in the business world.
When government officials and business leaders maintain a close relationship for their own financial benefit, as is often the case with public-private partnerships, it is sometimes called “crony capitalism.”
Crony capitalism is marked by favoritism when it comes to handing out legal permits, government grants, business contracts and special tax breaks.
Self-serving friendships or familial ties between businessmen and government officials mean anyone not on the “inside” of these relationships is excluded from the process.
On a certain level, some cronyism is inevitable. If a local government needs to hire a company for a construction project, for instance, the officials in charge of hiring will have a natural inclination to reach out to people they know. After all, they reason, what is the harm in using their position to help a friend or relative? Many people go into government because of this potential for making influential friends, finding jobs and building new business relationships.
Because those relationships result in decision-making based on political and social considerations, however, they often go wrong. Public resources that could be used for infrastructure, education or public safety are diverted into business deals that either go belly up, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars, or into seemingly endless projects that only serve to line the pockets of special interests.
In San Diego, the local government partnered with a private company to build a 10.2-mile toll road. It cost $847 million to complete, $140 million of which came from a federal loan. Less than three years later, the company went bankrupt and left taxpayers to pick up the tab. If this had been a purely private venture, only the initial investors would have lost out. Instead, the federal government lost $78 million on its loan, and the San Diego Association of Governments had to shell out $341.5 million to buy the failed company to keep the road operating.
The most famous recent example of a failed public-private partnership was the collapse of the solar energy company Solyndra. Despite skepticism from the U.S. Energy Department over the viability of the company, the Barack Obama administration fast-tracked them for a $527 million loan because it wanted to be seen as promoting green energy. California gave Solyndra another $25.1 million in tax breaks. Two years later, the company filed for bankruptcy while its executives took home nearly $1 million in bonuses.
While gambling with public funds on risky business ventures is bad enough, these arrangements also promote a sense of distrust, alienation and jealousy. It does not take an especially inquisitive mind to wonder why certain businesses or individuals are at the receiving end of these relationships and others are not.
Why, for instance, did Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) raise income taxes on thousands of Illinois businesses, but then give tax breaks to a handful of corporations? It was almost as if those companies had some kind of special access to the governor that every other Illinois business did not.
One need not go as far as Springfield to find similar examples. When the Rockford Park District needed to construct a “green roof” at Nicholas Conservatory and Gardens, for example, it awarded the $108,277 contract to none other than Christiansen Roofing, a construction company owned by Winnebago County Board Chairman Scott Christiansen (R). Even if the Park District did not hire that particular business as a result of Christiansen’s political connections, the dozens of other building contractors in the area who were left out of the deal could be forgiven for reaching that conclusion.
While some politicians and business leaders may trumpet the virtues of “public-private partnerships,” voters and taxpayers are justified in greeting them with skepticism. They may just turn out to be crony capitalism in disguise.
Michael Kleen is a local author, historian, and owner of Black Oak Media. He holds a master’s degree in history and master’s degree in education. Read his previous columns online at makleen.com.
Austin American Statesman
September 19, 2012
By Laylan Copelin
The Texas Facilities Commission on Wednesday unanimously voted to implement a faster, more transparent process for considering unsolicited proposals from the private sector to develop state lands.
The change comes a year after the commission approved its guidelines for public-private partnerships — but only weeks after one of the first projects in Austin stirred public opposition to the process as much as the developer's proposal.
Private-public partnerships — or P3s, as they're called — are being touted as a way for governments to finance improvements, pay for services or raise money.
Austin American Statesman
Published: 7:25 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 9, 2012
Turns out the saga of the Texas 130 tollway extension has even more to it than I managed to cover in this space last week.
For one thing, I was not alone in raising questions about the Texas Transportation Commission's decision to set what seems like an artificially low 55 mph speed limit on the new two-lane frontage roads alongside the as-yet unopened toll road south of Mustang Ridge. Those frontage roads will officially be U.S. 183 because this is the route U.S. 183 followed before the tollway started construction in 2009.
Plaintiffs hoping to stop the privatization of correctional facilities in Ohio are also challenging the constitutionality of Gov. John Kasich’s proposal to lease the Ohio Turnpike to private investors.
Dallas, TX (PRWEB) September 11, 2012
Balfour Beatty Construction made two key leadership additions in the Houston office, appointing Juan Rodriguez Vice President of Public/Private Projects, and Dawn Landry as Director of Business Development.
In their new roles, Rodriguez and Landry will focus on continuing development in the company’s core markets of interiors and special projects in Houston and the surrounding area, while expanding into public/private ground-up and education projects. In addition, they will be working to maintain momentum in creating value-based solutions for integrated project delivery, public-private partnerships, design-build and other innovative client applications.
Austin American Statesman
Published: 7:40 p.m. Monday, Sept. 3, 2012
Based on assumed savings from a five-year pilot project that began this summer, the Texas Department of Transportation is considering outsourcing all routine maintenance on long stretches of Texas interstate highways, including much of Interstate 35. The agency has touted the potential savings as high as $120 million over five years.
TxDOT has presented the pilot as a fresh concept and a success even in its infancy, but the agency has experimented as early as 1999 with having private companies take over all maintenance of parts of I-35 and Interstate 20. And the results of that program were "extremely disappointing," according to legislative testimony by TxDOT's former executive director.
The state of Virginia executed a contract with an Australian company on July 31 designed to discourage ride sharing and ensure congestion on major commuter routes until after the year 2085. A cleverly worded "non-compete" provision buried in a massive contract document puts taxpayers on the hook for paying monetary damages to toll road operator Transurban if the state decides within the next 73 years to expand the free lanes on Interstate 95, improve the highly congested Route One corridor or make driving easier on the Occoquan Bridge.Link to article here.
Cintra tries to sell San Antonio on SH 130
By Terri Hall
Examiner.com
“There are few things that Governor Perry and President Obama agree on, but both oppose an increase in the motor fuels tax,” began Chris Lippincott, former Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) public information officer and the new public relations point man for Spain-based Cintra, the concession company for the first privatized toll road in Texas -- State Highway 130, segments 5 & 6, from Mustang Ridge to I-10 in Seguin. Lippincott was the guest speaker and chief cheerleader for Cintra’s toll road set to open this fall at yesterday’s luncheon hosted by the oldest transportation group in San Antonio, the San Antonio Transportation Association, established in 1921.
As its new spokesperson, Lippincott is the Texas face to a foreign company that’s been the center of controversy in Texas since the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) development rights were first awarded to Cintra in 2005. SH 130 is the first public private partnership (P3) tied to the Trans Texas Corridor, TTC-35, signed in the midst of a heated legislative session that eventually slapped a moratorium on such contracts in 2007.
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