Link to article here

TxDOT teams up with international group on Trans-Texas Corridor
Dallas Business Journal
January 18, 2006

In a rare endorsement, the Texas Department of Transportation is joining the North America’s Supercorridor Coalition Inc., a nonprofit, international organization based in Dallas.

The members of Nasco, founded in 1994, aim to develop the highway infrastructure from Canada through the United States to Mexico, particularly the Trans-Texas Corridor, which would widen and expand Interstate 35 into a mega-trade corridor.

A press release Wednesday from Nasco and TxDOT said the two will work together to ensure development of the TTC, championed by Gov. Rick Perry.

“The Texas Department of Transportation is formalizing its commitment to work closely with Nasco and its local, state and international members as the strongest voice on the continued development of I-35 and Trans-Texas Corridor 35,” said Ric Williamson, chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission.

“Without question, Nasco has been the single most influential organization, not just in Texas, but the nation, when it comes to the development of I-35,” Williamson added. “They also know what it will take to meet the challenges of the next 50 years.”

TxDOT will market the I-35 and Trans-Texas Corridor 35 with Nasco to state, national and international audiences, as well as work on common federal priorities, said Amadeo Saenz, TxDOT’s assistant executive director for engineering operations.

Saenz said Nasco’s leadership has helped TxDOT to understand how a broad transportation corridor benefits all sides.

Saenz and Nasco Executive Director Tiffany Melvin will make presentations on I-35 and TTC-35 at the Northeast Mexico-Texas workshop on logistics for regional competitiveness in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico.

Nasco has memoranda of understanding with eight U.S. states and one Canadian province for ongoing cooperation in enhancing the I-35/I-29 and I-94 corridors and major connectors to those highways. Nasco also has signed a letter of intent with the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation of Mexico to develop a plan to monitor the operation of commercial cargo vehicles along I-35 using intelligent transportation systems.

The 20-member Nasco Board of Directors includes eight Texans representing Webb, Bell, Denton and Tarrant counties, Free Trade Alliance San Antonio, EWI Risk Services, the International Bank of Commerce and the international law firm Strasburger & Price.

Nasco’s general membership includes Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), Hillwood Properties/Alliance Texas, Love’s Country Stores, the City of Midlothian, the City of Gainesville, GrowthNet Trading, and Franco Eleuteri & Associates.

Web sites: www.Nascocorridor.com and www.dot.state.tx.us

Link to article here.

Toll-road issue growing heated
By JOHN MORITZ
STAR-TELEGRAM AUSTIN BUREAU
June 1, 2006

AUSTIN – Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, running for governor as an independent, was teed off Wednesday over Republican Gov. Rick Perry’s state transportation commission chairman’s remarks that a foreign-owned company could supersede local officials in deciding where new toll roads are built.

Commission Chairman Ric Williamson, a Perry appointee and longtime friend, rejected pleas by North Texas leaders last week that a road-building consortium partly owned by a Spanish firm be forced to locate a new tollway system closer to the population centers in Fort Worth and Dallas. When courting private companies to construct highway projects, Williamson told about 100 officials, “you can’t tell them where to build the road.”

Strayhorn emphatically disagreed.

“To me, that is absolutely shocking,” Strayhorn said during a news conference at her campaign headquarters. “Texas property belongs to Texans, not foreign companies. Texas freeways belong to Texas companies.

“Apparently, the governor and his transportation chairman believe that what a foreign company wants, a foreign company gets,” she added. “And Texans have no say over our freeways and critical infrastructure.”

Williamson said Wednesday that his remarks, which were first reported Friday in the Star-Telegram, were intended to make clear that private companies in the toll-road business must have the latitude to ensure that their ventures with the state are profitable.

Perry’s campaign spokesman Robert Black said that a private contractor working with federal environmental regulators would narrow down proposed routes for any new tollways, but that state officials will determine where the roads are built.

“Ultimately, the state of Texas will have the final call,” Black said.

The North Texas officials, including Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief and state Sen. Kim Brimer, want Cintra Zachry to rethink its plans to route new toll roads well east of Dallas. Such a move would encourage so-called leapfrog development away from the urban centers and into rural prairie, officials told the commission.

Cintra is a Spanish-owned company; Zachry is based in San Antonio.

Strayhorn used her news conference not only to chide Williamson’s response, but also to demand that Perry instruct the transportation commission to release all portions of its contract to build toll roads connecting San Antonio to North Texas over the next decade. The projects would be built with private funds and would be worth an estimated $6 billion to the consortium, which would pay the state $1.2 billion to collect tolls for 50 years.

A year ago, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that the contract must be made public. But the consortium and the transportation commission have filed suit to overturn that ruling on grounds that it contains sensitive proprietary information.

Black said that the bulk of the contract is accessible on a state-operated Web site. But like any state deal with a private concern, information that could compromise a company’s profitability is protected, he said.

“Carole Strayhorn is angry and wants attention so she launches a shrill, trumped-up attack,” Black said.

Black also resurrected Strayhorn’s archived news releases from the late 1990s and early 2000s that show Strayhorn — then a Republican — had been an early champion of toll roads to ease urban congestion and an advocate of increased foreign investment to boost the Texas economy.

In January 2001, her office urged the transportation commission to “adopt innovative financing tools, such as Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicle (or GARVEE bonds), build more toll roads and tap into a new line of credit through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act,” according to one document distributed by Black.

Strayhorn said that Perry’s toll-road plan, the Trans-Texas Corridor, is far more aggressive than anything she has proposed.

“Perry’s … Trans-Texas Corridor, which I call a trans-Texas catastrophe, is going to be 4,000 miles long,” she said. “More mileage than Texas’ 3,200-mile share of the interstate system.”

Perry has touted the proposal as a visionary strategy involving highway and rail construction projects designed to ease Texas’ burgeoning traffic congestion.

Direct link to Human Events article here.

The author, Jerome Corsi, was recently on the Carl Wiglesworth Show discussing some of these concerns. Many of the web sites he refers to are also included in an article we’ve had featured since the beginning on the Internationalizing of Our U.S. Roads here.

Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
by Jerome R. Corsi
Human Events
June 12, 2006

Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.

Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.

As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The American public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North American Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.

Just examine the following websites to get a feel for the magnitude of NAFTA Super Highway planning that has been going on without any new congressional legislation directly authorizing the construction of the planned international corridor through the center of the country.

NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., is a “non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.” Where does that sentence say anything about the USA? Still, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation to plan the NAFTA Super Highway as a 10-lane limited-access road (five lanes in each direction) plus passenger and freight rail lines running alongside pipelines laid for oil and natural gas. One glance at the map of the NAFTA Super Highway on the front page of the NASCO website will make clear that the design is to connect Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. into one transportation system.

Kansas City SmartPort Inc. is an “investor based organization supported by the public and private sector” to create the key hub on the NAFTA Super Highway. At the Kansas City SmartPort, the containers from the Far East can be transferred to trucks going east and west, dramatically reducing the ground transportation time dropping the containers off in Los Angeles or Long Beach involves for most of the country. A brochure on the SmartPort website describes the plan in glowing terms: “For those who live in Kansas City, the idea of receiving containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico may sound unlikely, but later this month that seemingly far-fetched notion will become a reality.”

The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC) an “SPP office” that is dedicated to organizing the many working groups laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working Committee on Transportation Planning has finalized a plan such that “(m)ethods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in bottleneck studies will be constructed or implemented.” The report notes that new SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed this year. The border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed bump for the Mexican trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter the U.S. on their way to the Kansas City SmartPort.

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is overseeing the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway. A 4,000-page environmental impact statement has already been completed and public hearings are scheduled for five weeks, beginning next month, in July 2006. The billions involved will be provided by a foreign company, Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain. As a consequence, the TTC will be privately operated, leased to the Cintra consortium to be operated as a toll-road.

The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plain view. Still, Bush has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the full attention of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating a North American Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision to form the European Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons on the part of the Bush Administration.

A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks.

Mr. Corsi is the author of several books, including “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry” (along with John O’Neill), “Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil” (along with Craig R. Smith), and “Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians.” He is a frequent guest on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show. He will soon co-author a new book with Jim Gilchrist on the Minuteman Project.

Link to article here.

Note: If I read “cash-strapped states” one more time, I think I’m going over the edge! Texas had an $8.2 billion budget SURPLUS until the Legislature at the behest of the Governor squandered it away and STILL managed to raise our taxes! So what’s cash-strapped about Texas? They spend money like kids in a candy store and complain there’s still not enough….it’ll NEVER be enough. We, the taxpayers, have to make it ENOUGH…at the ballot box. Send a message this November…ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! THis article notes that Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana who sold a 75 year lease of the Indiana Toll Road to Cintra-Macquarie (same two companies vying to buy the San Antonio toll starter system) had his approval ratings plummet since the deal. Perry and anyone associated with this massive shift to tolling and making driving more expensive at a time with record high gas prices ought to take note because it will lead to their removal from office!

Strapped States Try New Route, Lease Toll Roads to Foreign Firms
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Page A01

ELKHART, Ind. — Its official state motto is “the crossroads of America.” Yet Indiana is about to turn over its entire toll road for the next 75 years to two foreign companies, making it more expensive to drive.

The decision to hand the Indiana Toll Road to an Australian and Spanish team for $3.8 billion at the end of this month has blown up into one of the biggest brawls here in a generation. It has unsettled the state’s politics in the months before the November elections, pitting a governor who was President Bush’s first budget director against the people of northern Indiana, which the highway passes through.

The decision also places Indiana at the leading edge of a nascent trend in which states and local governments are exploring the idea of privatizing parts of the United States’ prized interstate highway system. The idea goes beyond projects, such as Northern Virginia’s Dulles Greenway, in which states have turned to private companies to build or widen toll roads. Now, they are considering selling or leasing some of the best-known and most-traveled routes across America.

The trend started 1 1/2 years ago, when Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) pushed through a 99-year lease of the Chicago Skyway, nearly eight miles of elevated highway across the South Side, for $1.8 billion.

Since then, a New Jersey lawmaker has proposed selling a 49 percent interest in the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway. New York Gov. George E. Pataki (R) is trying to persuade the legislature to let investors rebuild or replace the Hudson River’s Tappan Zee Bridge. In Houston, Harris County officials are studying leasing 57 miles of toll roads.

Locally, Virginia transportation officials announced last month that they would lease a debt-ridden toll road outside Richmond, the Pocahontas Parkway, to a private firm for $522 million.

Half a century after President Dwight D. Eisenhower persuaded the nation to build the interstate highway system, the allure of privatization is a rethinking of the relationship between the government and its roads. It reverses the view of highways as a public responsibility, ingrained since the first half of the 19th century, when states took over roads, bridges and canals that had gone bankrupt in private hands.

The Bush administration advocates the new view. “We are like a poker game,” Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said in an interview. “We are inviting more people to the table and saying, ‘Bring money when you come.’ ” Such eagerness for private investment stems from the financial strains on an overburdened highway system at a time when the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress want to curb domestic spending. The interstate system is decaying, and traffic congestion has worsened. Inflation in the price of building and improving roads is rampant.

Most significantly, money from federal and state gasoline taxes that pay for roads are falling further behind the need, with no political appetite in an era of record gas prices to increase the rates. According to U.S. projections, the part of the federal Highway Trust Fund devoted to roads is to run out of money for the first time in its history in 2009.

In response, the administration persuaded Congress last summer to take steps to make it easier for the private sector to finance new roads — and take over existing ones. Lawmakers removed several legal barriers to charging tolls on interstates and gave private investors new access to tax-free bonds for transportation projects.

Mineta has been urging U.S. financial institutions to get involved. “This type of dialogue really didn’t exist two years ago,” said Mark Florian, a managing director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which was paid $19 million to negotiate the Indiana deal and has discussed similar possibilities with officials in more than 35 states.

Still, skepticism abounds: Will companies take good care of highways? Will toll roads become too expensive to drive? Will investors pluck profitable routes, leaving others to crumble? What will happen to public toll-road workers — including 600 in Indiana who have been promised interviews by the new operators, but not the same job?

In Elkhart, resistance to such change runs deep. At a rest stop here on a recent day — at Milepost 77 near the midpoint between Illinois and Ohio — both Indiana drivers and interstate truckers were almost uniformly against what the state has done. “I heard that foreigners were going to lease it, and that sounds like a bad deal to me,” said Kreig Eberle, 36, a truck driver from Chillicothe, Ill., who uses the toll road nearly every day. “I think it is kind of baloney. Indiana ought to run it itself.”

Dankia McLaren, 22, a kitchen designer from nearby South Bend, said: “It is sad. . . . It is just going to make it more expensive to drive.”

The passionate opposition has astonished the architect of the deal, Gov. Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. (R), Bush’s first budget director.

Daniels said he had his “little epiphany” about the toll road in 2004, after he returned from Washington and was campaigning for governor. At a barbecue in rural western Indiana, a veteran of the state highway department came over and said: “You understand it’s a joke, don’t you.”

The joke, he told Daniels, was that the state for years had a list of promised transportation projects that would never be built. Running on a platform of economic development, Daniels immediately viewed a roads program as a means of creating jobs and attracting business to spur Indiana’s sagging economy.

Soon after taking office last year, the governor ordered his staff to compute the price of the pent-up projects — $2.6 billion more, it turned out, than the state could afford — and propose ways to pay for them. Of more than 30 options, Daniels said in an interview, generating money by leasing the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road was the only “real bold stroke that could substantially close this huge gap.”

In the shower one morning, he came up a name for his plan: “Major Moves,” borrowed from the title of a Hank Williams Jr. country song. The governor announced Major Moves in September, saying the state was open for bids on the toll road to raise money for a 10-year transportation plan.

Late in January, he invited legislators, builders, manufacturers, mayors and trade union leaders to his office in Indianapolis to disclose that the winning bid was $3.85 billion, more than enough to fund the state’s road projects. The crowd burst into applause. “Everybody thought, that was that,” Daniels recalled. “We can stop dreaming and start digging all these big projects.”

But, Daniels had not anticipated what he calls “the x-word” — for xenophobia — or the protests or the bumper stickers that say, “Keep the Toll Road, Lease Mitch.”

“This was an authentic, spontaneous, very emotional reaction,” the governor said, “and no interest group caused it.”

The proposal stirred up one of the biggest fights the Indiana legislature had ever seen, with rallies and expensive media campaigns on both sides, and the governor unable to change minds at jammed town hall meetings in communities along the toll road where opposition was most fierce.

“Never in my legislative career will I ever again be faced with a [bill] quite like this,” said the chief sponsor, state Rep. Randy Borror (R) of Fort Wayne, who walked the statehouse with thick notebooks filled with figures showing how much transportation money each legislator’s district would get from the plan.

The winning bidders were Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Sydney, the same firm that controls the Dulles Greenway, and Cintra Concesiones de Infrastructures de Transporte S.A. of Madrid. Under the lease, the companies got the right to raise tolls — which have not been increased in two decades — for cars and trucks right away, and eventually to keep pace annually with inflation. The 103-page lease spells out the companies’ responsibilities in meticulous detail, including clearing snow and road kill within specified times, and granting state police the right to patrol.

Steve Allen, Macquarie’s chief executive, said the company, which operates toll roads in nine countries, has an incentive to improve the highways to attract more drivers. Since it took over the Chicago Skyway, he said, the company has built electronic toll booths sooner than required and made lane changes that reduce backups.

Indiana legislators were not reassured. Daniels and his allies made big compromises: extra money for each county along the toll road, a postponement of higher rates for cars until electronic tolls are installed, job-training money for economically depressed Gary. Even so, the plan passed the state House by one vote.

Three months after the legislation squeaked through, feelings remain raw.

“The whole thing stinks,” said state Rep. B. Patrick Bauer, the House Democratic leader. The two companies, he said, “got a heck of an unbelievable deal. We got a bad deal.”

Daniels’s approval ratings have plummeted, from about 50 percent early last winter to 37 percent in the most recent polls. Borror said the issue “complicates the election” for state legislators in November.

“There are going to be a lot of states that fail at this,” Borror said, “because they underestimate the amount of work it takes to get this bill passed.” Even so, Daniels said, “I don’t believe we’ll ever [again] be able to do any one thing that will be as transformative and positive for the future of this state.”

The Denver Post did a multi-part expose’ on toll roads that was also highlighted on Pat Driscoll’s blog here.

Read this very crucial series here:
Suspicious money trail
Oregon’s fee experiment
Paved with bad projections
Eminent domain abuse
Risky financial scheme only benefits the few

Washington, D.C. – A Congressional hearing on Wednesday will focus on the potential for utilizing public private partnerships to help meet future highway infrastructure financing needs. The hearing by the U.S. House Subcommittee on Highways, Transit and Pipelines, chaired by U.S. Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI), is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 24th in room 2167 Rayburn House Office Building. This hearing is intended to be the first in a series on this topic. A live webcast of the hearing will be available at the Committee’s website:
www.house.gov/transportation

Wednesday’s Witness List
Panel I
– Honorable Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana (read about his culpability here)
– Honorable Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia
Panel II
– Honorable Matthew Garrett, Director, Oregon Department of Transportation
– Bryan Grote, Principal, Mercator Advisors, LLC
– D.J. Gribbon, Director, Macquarie Holdings (USA) Inc.
– Mark Florian, Managing Director, Goldman, Sachs & Co
– Karen J. Hedlund, Partner, Nossaman, Guthner, Knox, Elliott, LLP
– John Foote*, Senior Fellow, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

*Note: John Foote from 1995-2005 was the co-founder and Executive Vice-President of Transcore, a transportation engineering company, specializing in “intelligent transportation systems and services,” such as electronic toll collection. Previously he was a managing partner for Lewis, Foote and Company in Philadelphia, a private investment partnership. He has also Managing Director of Chase Manhattan, Asia Ltd, in Hong Kong. He will be researching the US Department of Transportation’s vehicle-infrastructure-integration (VII) initiative. As a Senior Fellow, he will be consulting with Tony Gomez-Ibanez and with John Donahue www.ksg.harvard.edu/cbg/fellows/current_bios.htm]

The intent can’t be any clearer, our government intends to sell Texas to the highest bidder, regardless of the consequences like the highest possible tolls for our citizens, loss of control, foreign management of our public infrastructure, and the secret contracts (see this and this).

Open for Business
In Texas, what are known elsewhere as public-private partnerships are known here as comprehensive development agreements, or CDAs. Join us this June at our new CDA workshop, which will provide the most up-to-date information about projects under procurement in the state’s CDA program.

This is a networking opportunity not to be missed. Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams will be on hand to talk about the Lone Star State’s exciting economic development and investment opportunities. Commissioner Ted Houghton and key TxDOT officials will discuss Texas projects and the state’s innovative approach to delivering transportation infrastructure.

What attendees need to know:
– The transportation department has made many changes to its CDA program since the first workshop in January, which drew more than 500 participants.
– No webcast is planned for the June workshop, but program materials and the attendee list will be available soon after the event.
– Infra-News PPP Conference is being held that same week.
RSVP to TTA_TTA-Mail@dot.state.tx.us
To ensure sufficient meeting space, please provide the number of attendees from your organization/firm by May 22. Future updates on the workshop and the CDA program will be directed to this e-mail distribution group. Workshop updates will be posted at www.dot.state.tx.us

Thursday, June 8, 2006

9:30 a.m.
Opening Session
Welcome
Michael W. Behrens,
Executive Director, Executive Director, TxDOT

50th Anniversary of the Interstate System
Texas Transportation Institute (video)
The Interstate Generation

Michael W. Behrens, Executive Director, TxDOT
Additional Remarks:
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials
Harold Linnenkohl, President
Associated General Contractors of America
Steve Massie, Senior Vice President
American Road and Transportation Builders Association
Eugene McCormick, President
International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association
Stephen F. Mayer, Immediate Past President
“The Next 50 Years”
Texas Department of Transportation (video)
Keynote Address:
Joseph Giglio, Vice Chairman, Hudson Institute
12:30 p.m.
Road Hand Awards Luncheon
Honorable Norman Y. Mineta, Secretary, United States Department of Transportation
Road Hand Awards Recognition
Steven E. Simmons, Deputy Executive Director, TxDOT
2:30 p.m.
Breakout Sessions
The Road to Economic Opportunity
Moderator: Phil Wilson, Deputy Chief of Staff, Office of the Governor
Speakers: Ray Perryman, President, The Perryman Group
Robert V. Wingo, President, TexasOne
Edward B. Romanov, Jr., President and Chief Operating Officer, The Allen Group / Dallas Logistics Hub
The National Tolling Conversation
Moderator: Stephen F. Mayer, Immediate Past President, International Bridge, Tunnel, and Turnpike Association
Speakers: Marshall Crawford, Managing Director, JPMorgan
Dave Kristick, Director of Operations, E-470 Public Highway Authority (ie – Cintra’s toll road where they got sued by the Canadian govt for jacking up toll rates beyond peoples’ ability to pay)
The Future of Road Building
Moderator: Amadeo Saenz Jr., Assistant Executive Director for Engineering Operations, TxDOT
Speakers: Zack Burkett, President and CEO, Zack Burkett Co.
Jim Andoga, President, Austin Bridge and Road
Doug Pitcock Jr. , President, Chair, CEO, Williams Brothers Construction Co.
Bob Heitmann, Vice President, Zachry American Infrastructure
6:00 p.m. Reception
7:00 p.m.
Dinner and Keynote Address
Honorable Rick Perry, Governor of Texas

Friday, June 9, 2006

8:30 a.m.
Breakout Sessions
Legislative Action
Moderator: Lawrence Olsen, Executive Vice President, Texas Good Roads Transportation Association
Speakers: Representative Larry Phillips, Vice Chairman, Committee on Transportation, Texas House of Representatives

Senator John Carona, Chairman, Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security, Texas Senate
Michael L. Williams, Commissioner, Railroad Commission of Texas
Gerry Pate, President, Pate Engineers, Inc.
You Bet Your Assets: Leveraging Existing Infrastructure
Moderator: Ted Houghton, Commissioner, Texas Transportation Commission
Speakers: Judge Robert Eckels, Harris County
Geoffrey Segal, Director of Government Reform, Reason Foundationv
Greg Carey, Managing Director, Goldman, Sachs & Company
Texas Corridors
Moderator: Steven E. Simmons, Deputy Executive Director, TxDOT
Speakers: Tiffany Melvin, Executive Director, North American’s Super Corridor Coalition

James Beauchamp, President, MOTRAN/La Entrada al Pacifico
Michael Reeves, President, Ports to Plains Corridor Coalition
Judge John Thompson, Vice Chair, Alliance for I-69 Texas
10:30 a.m.
Breakout Sessions
The Future of Transportation Financing
Moderator: Graham Hill, Majority Staff Director, U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
U.S. House Subcommittee on Highways, Transit & Pipeline
Jack Schenendorf, Commission on the Future of the Highway System
Joe Krier, Texas Study Commission on Transportation Financing
James M. Whitty, Manager, Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding, Oregon Department of Transportation
Regional Mobility Authorities
Moderator: Mike Heiligenstein, Executive Director, CTRMA
Speakers: Jerdy Gary, President, Grayson County RMA
Terry Brechtel, Executive Director, Alamo RMA
David Allex, President, Cameron County RMA
Jeff Austin, III, Chair, Northeast Texas RMA
Aviation, Rail, and Public Transportation
Moderator: Judge Cletis Millsap, Hopkins County
Speakers: Dave Fulton, Director, Aviation Division, TxDOT
Roger Nober, Former Chair, Surface Transportation Board and Partner, Steptoe & Johnson in Washington D.C.
Eric Gleason, Director, Public Transportation Division, TxDOT
12:30 p.m.
Lunch and Closing Address
Honorable Roger Williams, Secretary of State

More info: www.texastransportationforum.com

Barron’s Toll Article published May 8, 2006.

This cover story hits the nail on the head when it says: “America’s toll roads, better known for political patronage than for strong business and financial management, suddenly are HOT assets.” Yep, as we’ve contended all along, this is about a money grab and greedy politicians fleecing the taxpayers for BIG foreign payouts. Elected officials whose sworn duty is to represent and serve the public interest are selling off America’s infrastructure to make a buck.

Here’s some of the most telling statements:

“Gasoline taxes, the traditional method of funding highway repair and construction, are no longer sufficient for the job….if anything, lawmakers are looking to cut these taxes.”

Oh really, is that why ex-Transportation Commissioner David Laney told the highway lobby at the San Antonio Mobility Coalition’s Transpsortation Leadership Forum last Septmber that we need to increase the gas tax, tie it to inflation, IN ADDITION to tolling nearly every highway in Texas? Is that why State Rep. Carter Casteel introduced a bill to allow counties to increase gas taxes up to 10 cents per gallon while she also supported dozens of bills to toll existing freeways? Our lawmakers have shown us there’s no tax they’re not willing to raise or levy on behalf of the highway lobby. Our politicians’ campaign donations and perks courtesy of road builders are too well-liked to put the public good and our economy over the priorities of lobbyists.

“The $1.8 billion purchase last year of the Chicago Skyway (by Cintra-Macquarie, bidders of SA toll system read about it here) and the $3.8 billion deal last month for the Indiana Toll Road have opened the eyes of politicans, who didn’t recognize that their toll roads could fetch such hefty sums.” ‘This is just the beginning,’ says Philip Villaluz, a municipal bond analyst at Merrill Lynch. ‘The shock value of these price tags is getting the attention of politicians across the country.'”

Well, it’s getting the attention of the public, too. Indiana politicians voted to sell the Indiana Toll Road to Cintra-Macquarie even though the voters didn’t want them to by a margin of more than 2 to 1 (read about it here)! These politicians even acknowledged there could be a BIG political backlash for stabbing the taxpayers in the back yet they did it ANYWAY! You bet there will be a backlash, see Pennsylvania’s political fallout for BIG SPENDERS here.

“The lure for investors is that, before maintenance costs are taken into account, the margins on toll roads can be 80% or more.”

No doubt there’s BIG money to be made or we wouldn’t see our government salivating at the selling of American infrastructure to the highest bidder! Cintra-Macquarie is already seeing increased revenue on the Chicago Skyway…guess why? A 50 cent toll hike to $2.50 for cars. That’s what we can count on when our government opts to privatize our public highways….the highest possible tolls…

“For motorists , privatization’s downside is higher tolls. Investors won’t buy roads without being assured that they can raise tolls over the years.”

Collin County officials up in Dallas feel the same way…privatizing our roads equals the highest possible tolls for our citizens. Read about it here.

“Wall Street investment bankers, led by Goldman Sachs, have descended on state capitals, trying to convince toll authorities and legislators of the benefits of privatization.”

Well, there ya have it. See why the public outcry gets largely ignored? We have a hard time competing with the army of lobbyists who exert more influence over our elected officials than the voters do (read about lobbyists corrupting politics here)! Well, that’s why we’re in the midst of a taxpayer revolt the size of Texas…to toss out these corrupt politicians who repeatedly ignore the will of the PEOPLE and ignore the pleas of their own constituents!

“Politics plays a key role in determining which roads are privatized. The easiest to sell are those used heavily by out of state drivers rather than local motorists.”

Oh really, how would US 281, Loop 1604, and Bandera Rd qualify as being heavily used by out of state motorists? Politics is being played for sure, but TxDOT clearly wants to stick local motorists with the tab for these toll projects, and they intend to get their cash by taking away existing FREEway lanes and replacing them with frontage roads to do it (see plans for 281 here)! Before long, drivers won’t be able to get anywhere on an expressway without paying a toll even though we all continue to pay gas taxes!

THE INSIDIOUS PLAN OF INCREMENTALISM
“…Electronic payment systems have made toll increases less painful for motorists because they no longer have to fumble for money and wait in long lines. The relatively modest charges appear monthly on credit card statements amid many other items.”

Just like income taxes are hidden since they’re taken out of paychecks BEFORE you get your money, politicians think they can get away with tolls not only because they can now make them more invisible, but also get away with raising tolls regularly by hiding it on your credit bill so you will never feel the full hit of this new tax!

“The good news for the Cintra-Macquarie group is that it didn’t have to guarantee the Chicago and Indiana debt; the lenders accepted the road lease as collateral.”

WOW! How much worse for the taxpayers can you get??? Now these BIG foreign investors don’t even have to back-up these loans with their own collateral? Former Executive Director of the Alamo RMA, Tom Greibel, as well as others at TxDOT said repeatedly that the justification for privatizing our public freeways on these toll projects is because the PRIVATE ENTITY is taking on all the risk (not our government) and they deserve a return on their investment through steady toll increases. So how is that true if the same companies bidding on San Antonio’s toll starter system didn’t have to put up ANY collateral of their own? What’s the collateral, OUR ROADS! So if they default, the road goes under the control of a private lending institution? What absolute thievery!

Even toll road insiders like Golman-Sachs/JB Were analyst Allison Booth have been critical of the deal.

“Increasing competition for new toll road projects is resulting in monpolistic returns being competed away.”

Investors may end up just as livid as the taxpayers…privatizing our PUBLIC infrastructure translates into the highest tolls for our citizens, a drain on the economy (like all increases in transportation), and risky investment for the public and private sector alike. Read more about the foolish plan to sell our public infrastructure to foreign investors here.

Direct link to article here.

Given the fact that Spanish-based Cintra is cherry picking all the key toll corridors in the U.S. (which also happen to be the key trade corridors read about it here and here) to manage and control, seems Spanish companies are making some serious overtures to own, manage and/or control the world’s infrastructure.

Autostrade Board OKs Merger With Abertis
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 2, 2006; 5:51 PM

ROME — Italian highway company Autostrade SPA said its board on Tuesday night approved a merger with Spain’s Abertis, which analysts have described as an acquisition by the Spanish infrastructure company but the Italians insist is a “merger among equals.”

Autostrade’s chief executive, who opposed the deal, was stripped of his powers.

Autostrade also said in a statement that Abertis was expected to approve the plan at a board meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

Autostrade in the statement continued to describe the 12 billion euros ($14.7 billion) deal as a “merger,” but some terms suggest that Abertis is buying Autostrade. The new company would be called Abertis, be based in Barcelona and be run by the Abertis CEO.

Politicians and union leaders in Italy have expressed concern that Autostrade will come under Spanish control. Analysts and investors have welcomed the deal, which would create the world’s biggest toll roads operator, with a market value of 25 billion euros ($31.4 billion) and 20,000 employees in 16 countries.

The deal is “an industrial operation, an operation in a transparent market to create a European champion able to compete on the international level and to carry out further investments, beyond those planned, including in Italy,” the ANSA news agency quoted industrialist Gilberto Benetton as saying after Autostrade’s board met.

The company confirmed Italian news reports that the CEO, Vito Gamberale, had been stripped of his powers.

Autostrade Chairman Gian Maria-Gros-Pietro will take over Gamberale’s responsibilities, the Apcom news agency reported.

Earlier in the day, the company said its board of directors would consider a motion to replace Gamberale after he wrote a letter saying the planned acquisition was not in Italy’s national interest.

Two unidentified members of the board cited “just cause” for removing Gamberale after he reversed his support for the deal and said he would lobby against it at the board meeting which was expected to rubberstamp it, the company said.

Autostrade said that while Gamberale had voted in favor of the deal at an April 23 board meetinghe later wrote to the company’s chairman to express his concerns.

© 2006 The Associated Press

Time for Bracks to own up on PPP costs
Poor value behind the breezy facade of the public-private partnerships
By Kenneth Davidson
The Age www.theage.com.au
May 1, 2006

Next weekend Premier Steve Bracks and Treasurer John Brumby will be expected to account to deeply suspicious rank-and-file ALP membership for their fierce commitment to funding state infrastructure through public-private partnerships. This is despite evidence the projects initiated by the Government have failed to deliver value for money and are likely to short-change the people of the state as taxpayers, or as motorists, of billions of dollars over the life of the various contracts.

The most notorious examples include the franchising of Melbourne’s tram and rail network, the CityLink, the Spencer Street station redevelopment, the County Court, the Royal Women’s Hospital, the Convention Centre and related developments at Docklands and, coming up, the renovation of the Royal Children’s Hospital.

So far the scandalous misuse of public resources hasn’t registered on the political Richter scale because the complexity of the contracts negotiated between the Government and the financial underwriters of the projects have been couched in language that would make the tax avoidance schemes rubber stamped by the Barwick High Court judgements in the ’70s and ’80s look like exercises in plain English.

Justice Murphy famously described the High Court as the tax avoiders’ temple. The tax avoidance industry was brought to a shuddering stop when the Costigan Royal Commission into the the criminal behaviour of the Painters and Dockers Union inadvertently uncovered the systematic use of “bottom of the harbour” schemes to avoid tax.

Objective analysis of PPPs has not so far led to widespread disquiet. Its issue is too difficult for the swinging voter, who usually in the end are persuaded to vote for the most spectacular sizzle instead of the best sausage. (It will be some years down the track when the cost of these PPPs become unsustainable.)

But some people in the Bracks cabinet are disturbed. And their political antenna tells them the whole issue could blow up in their faces if the iconic Royal Children’s Hospital PPP delivers the same massive financial benefits to the PPP developers that will result from the RWH PPP at the same time as Victorians are expected to donate generously to the Easter Appeal for the RCH.

There is no reason why the financing for PPPs shouldn’t be set out in a way that allows ready comparison with traditional debt financing. Both involve a stream of payments or charges over the expected lifetime of the asset and both involve a charge against future tax revenues or users in the case of toll roads.

The only possible reason why governments addicted to PPPs (state Labour governments and the British Government) aren’t prepared to present information in a way that allows easy comparison of PPPs and traditional debt financing is because PPPs are their preferred financing mechanism and the comparison doesn’t favour PPPs. Under pressure from the state ALP rank-and-file, Brumby established an inquiry into the projects financed by PPPs up to 2004 by an independent consultant and a supporter of the Bracks Government, Peter Fitzgerald.

The report found that the policy delivered poor value for money. The poor value of these projects was disguised by avoiding direct comparison with the same project being debt financed, instead using tools invented by the banks selling PPPs such as the “Public Sector Comparator”, which is an abstract financial model that builds in fanciful assumptions to show PPPs in a favourable light.

One recommendation made by Fitzgerald in his 2004 report, which was accepted by the Bracks Government, said “the State should publish details of the forecast payment schedules where contracts are signed under Partnership Victoria policy. These schedules should be posted on the Partnership Victoria website.

So far this hasn’t been done. Under pressure, the draft platform to be considered next weekend (Ch.4.12) states: “Labor will … publish a public interest statement for all infrastructure projects including a value for money statement for all Partnership Victoria projects, taking into account traditional and other forms of financing.”

There are only two comparisons required. That which is expected under the PPP and that which would operate under full public funding.

There can be only one explanation as to why a Government refuses to do this and that is the Government has a vested interest in bad government. The secrecy surrounding the decision-making process in relation to PPPs is nothing more than a fertile breeding ground for corruption.

Businesses in the business of negotiating contracts worth hundreds of millions with government should not be able to hide behind commercial-in-confidence when they have their hand out for taxpayer dollars any more than a widow, an aged person or the unemployed can hide behind privacy considerations when their benefit claims are to be means tested.

Audited information should be officially available to confirm or deny the claims made in my columns to the effect that the subsidies to Connex and Yarra Trams at $560 million are twice the level paid to the Met in 1999, and that CityLink tolls paid to Transurban are twice that needed to finance the same road financed by debt. Also, it may show that the benefit of the $1.8 billion Southern Cross (old Spencer Street) roof could have been achieved with the expenditure of $100 million from the current budget surplus, that the Packer family’s County Court will cost $400 million more than the Federal Court, which is of similar capacity, and the RWH will cost $400 million more than if it was financed out of government debt.

I have sent a number of written questions to the Minister for Major Projects on the billion-dollar Convention Centre development on Southbank relating to the Government’s financial commitment, which should be answered if the Government is serious about meeting its commitment to Fitzgerald and the spirit of the draft ALP platform that is expected to be put to the Victorian branch next week.