Lou Dobbs Covers Tolling of America

From the 10 January 2007 issue of TollRoadNews.com:

2007.01.10
TV
Lou Dobbs report on privatization of tollroads - with comment

Privatization of tollroads was the subject of a highly tendentious report on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on CNN, Jan 9 2007. We don't waste time watching TV, but the following is based on a transcript with comments interposed.

DOBBS: Coming up next, critically important parts of our national infrastructure are being sold.

SAMUEL COMMENT: Wrong. Sold means legal title is being transferred in perpetuity. Turned over unconditionally. Under the toll concessions legal title is being retained by the states. Private investors are being selected in return for concession fees to get longterm concessions to run the tollroads at their risk under the detailed terms of control of a concession contract. Those contracts give the state a continuing say in many aspects of how the road is operated and they usually contain caps on toll rates.

DOBBS: And this administration wants those roads and highways and throughways and tollways to be sold. The Bush administration's very exciting -- very excited about the state selling away taxpayer bought and paid for infrastructure. We'll have that report.

SAMUEL COMMENT: Wrong again. The major initiatives have come at the city and state level with Texas, Virginia, and many other states passing laws to enable new tollroads to be built as toll concessions by investors. Mayor Daly in Chicago and Gov Mitch Daniels (IN) took the lead in implementing toll concessions on existing toll facilities and Govs Rendell (PA) and Corzine (NJ) are following. (Three of the four are Democrats.) The Bush Administration has got involved quite belatedly, and all it is doing is encouraging states who wish to do a toll concession to do it well by distributing best practices procedures.

DOBBS: Portions of interstate highway systems built with your tax dollars are now being sold to the highest bidder.

SAMUEL COMMENT: Dobbs would have deals done with the lowest bidder? Actually the states invariably cull out inexperienced bidders so the statement is untrue anyway. They exclude some who might bid higher but are less experienced and more liable to do a poor job. But there's a second error in that one sentence: none of these highways were built with tax dollars. They were built with toll revenue bonds issued by the City of Chicago, and by state toll authorities in IN, PA, and NJ.

DOBBS: And incredibly, it's being done with the federal government's encouragement. The Bush administration likes this idea.

SAMUEL COMMENT: For a good reason. Tax funds are limited and totally insufficient to fund the construction needed to avert growing congestion on the roads. Hence it would be irresponsible for the federal government NOT to favor tapping private investment funds.

DOBBS: Some of the leading bidders: Foreign investors.

SAMUEL COMMENT: Of course, because the international groups have experience operating tollroads, whereas the US has not until now been hospitable to private investment in tollroads. The location of shareholders is irrelevant. Their conduct of the roads will be governed by US written contracts and US law. If they mess up the roads revert to the states. The investors can't roll up the roads and take them to Madrid or Sydney.

DOBBS: Lisa Sylvester reports.(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Wall Street is paving the road to highway privatization, with help from the Bush administration.

SAMUEL COMMENT: Wall Street of course has gotten interested, but the initiative has come from state governors. Wall Street has traditionally made money raising capital for public toll authorities, but following the initiative of foreign investors they are now mobilizing equity funds for private concessions - 'privatization' if you like.

SYLVESTER: Nearly 50 investors submitted bids to buy or lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Indiana and Illinois have already signed over its toll roads to a group of foreign investors. And other states are eyeing privatization as a quick fix.

SAMUEL COMMENT: 50 investors have expressed interest and stated their qualifications. No bids have been made. A large number like 50 is good. It indicates competition and best price for the state and taxpayers. Who cares where the investors reside? Macquarie is described as Australian but over half its money is now being raised in the US. Regardless of their residency or nationality shareholders have the same interests - the security of their investment and a return on that investment.

ROBERT POOLE, REASON FOUNDATION: People are frustrated, both public sector people and citizens are frustrated that their roads are very congested, they are overcrowded with trucks. There's not enough capacity. And yet nobody really wants to raise gas taxes.

SAMUEL COMMENT: She had to have a token supporter as a gesture of balance, but she chops him off mid-thought falsely presenting him as thinking taxes should be raised. Poole tells me he made most of the points made here. Clearly the Dobbs crew doesn't want a real debate, just one-sided assertions and demagoguery.

SYLVESTER: Transportation Secretary Mary Peters offered model legislation, encouraging states to tap into the billions of dollars that the private sector and lenders have amassed to invest in transportation.

SAMUEL COMMENT: the one solitary fair and accurate statement in the whole report.

SYLVESTER: But Congressman Peter DeFazio says it is a deal for corporations and investors, no deal for taxpayers.

REP. PETER DEFAZIO (D), OREGON: These private interests would have the power of eminent domain, and they basically would have unlimited authority over the term of the contract to raise tolls. A private entity beyond the reach of any future state legislature, governor, or Congress under contract.

SAMUEL COMMENT: This man should be confined to his office and not let out until he has read the full text of either the Indiana Toll Road concession or the Chicago Skyway concession. I'd give him the choice. He presently talks from a position of total ignorance.

SYLVESTER: Critics also call it fiscally irresponsible. States receive a lump sum up front. Future generations receive no toll revenues.

SAMUEL COMMENT: Fiscal irresponsibility is rife now among state owned tollroads though it varies in degree from one to another. Some try to be fiscally responsible but it's tough. Unfortunately too many of these multi-billion dollar assets are run by political hacks as temporary managers between changes of state administration, they produce financial accounts that would land any corporation in trouble with the SEC. Politicians play populist politics with the pricing of tolls. They buy off favored constituencies by granting them special discounts or toll exemptions. They indulge toll collectors labor unions (Teamsters) by paying $26/hour for workers who can be recruited at half the price. They often delay innovation. A number support large not-invented-here engineering departments. Under state ownership taxpayers are getting little or no return on investment. There's fiscal irresponsib ility for you.

It is not true that toll concessions have to be a one-off upfront fee. It is up to the states what they choose to negotiate in the concessions by way of compensation. Two concessions at least provide for sharing of profits (Segments 5 and 6 TX130 and Pocahontas Parkway VA) annually for the full term of the concession.

SYLVESTER: And public sentiment is solidly against selling off taxpayer-owned assets. especially to foreign companies.In Indiana, more than twice as many people were against the deal than were for it.

SAMUEL COMMENT: There was virtually no opposition in Chicago to the Skyway deal but it's true there was strong opposition in Indiana among the public - it passed both houses of the state legislature - though twice is exaggerated. There is a vast amount of ignorant emotion surrounding this issue, thanks in part to moronic TV shows like this.

SYLVESTER: The transportation groups are dismayed the Bush administration has officially backed these private-public arrangements.

SAMUEL COMMENT: I'm only aware of a single group having taken a stance against it - the OOIDA, a smallish truckers group. Who does Lou Dobbs go to? Here goes.

TODD SPENCER, INDEPENDENT DRIVERS ASSOCIATION (OOIDA): We were stunned. We were amazed, but I'd have to say, unfortunately, we were not shocked. They have been shopping this idea, this draft legislation, this proposal to states for over a year now and, you know, to them, rather than responsible transportation policy, their answer is to sell-off our highways. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SAMUEL COMMENT: Tollroads are business enterprises. They sell access to roadspace, financing it, constructing it, and maintaining it, in return for fees from users. That's a business activity. There is nothing shocking or amazing about business doing tollroads. It is the way we conduct most of the provision of goods and services in this country, apart from the postal service.

SYLVESTER: Despite the many concerns, privatizing highways is gaining momentum across the country. Legislation is expected to be introduced in Pennsylvania in the coming weeks that will call for a long-term lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

SAMUEL COMMENT: OK, another accurate statement.

SYLVESTER: Right now, Lou, the leading bidders are from Australia and Spain -- Lou.

SAMUEL COMMENT: she has the scoop on me at TOLLROADSnews. Leading bidders? There are no bids yet, so no one is leading. Devilish Spaniards and Australians as "leading" is invented here to fan hysteria about foreign investors. This isn't reporting. It is scaremongering nonsense.

DOBBS: It -- I mean, this is just -- it's incredible. The ideas that are being put forward to avoid public responsibility, the idea that a state government or an authority of any kind could sell infrastructure, highways, it just boggles the imagination.

SAMUEL COMMENT: By this logic the state government which doesn't build and operate public housing itself is shirking responsibility for housing the people, the state government that doesn't run supermarkets is not taking responsibility for feeding the people, or the state which doesn't run electricity power plants is shirking responsibility for providing electric power. Dobbs has a socialist assumption here that government has to take responsibility for directly providing all services.

SYLVESTER: This, if there's ever been an example of where private corporate interests and the Bush administration are sort of working hand-in-hand, this is a perfect example of that, Lou.

SAMUEL COMMENT: so the administration should be at odds with business? Working to facilitate the deployment of private capital to provide transportation improvements is wrong?

SYLVESTER: And, unfortunately, the average person, the average consumer, may not be a winner out of all of this, Lou.

SAMUEL COMMENT: of course it's possible that concessions will be botched but the odds are the tollroads will be more efficiently operated with more professional management, with less patronage, with more innovation, with better attention to customer needs, with less corruption under business control than under state government control. Average consumers should win just as they have with the demise of state ownership of business in China and the former Soviet bloc countries.

DOBBS: Well, if they're not aware, we're going to do our best to make them aware. The idea that whether it's Indiana where it's 2-1 opposition and yet they went ahead and sold that highway in Indiana, the fact that people haven't got the energy and the commitment to stop these kinds of - I mean, this is public treasure infrastructure, national assets, that are being given away, sold away to interest, private interests.

SAMUEL COMMENT: Glad you corrected the slip up, Lou. Not given away but sold away is better. At least that concedes the state gets a bunch of money that allows it to pay down its debt or reduce taxes. Leased is more accurate than sold.

Interests, private interests? Sounds bad, Lou, but in case you hadn't noticed, that's capitalism and the American way. Private interests own most of the assets of this country. I believe you even have private interests there owning CNN?

DOBBS: It's, as I say, mind-boggling.

SAMUEL COMMENT: That sums it up nicely, Lou. Your mind is indeed boggled on this.

DOBBS: Lisa, thank you very much. Lisa Sylvester from Washington. Lisa will be following this story throughout.

SAMUEL COMMENT: So we can look forward to more misinformation and serial scaremongering from you two. That's just great.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-01-10

Postscript:

CNBC report on the "infancy" of Infrastructure investing:



Another Lou Dobbs report on privatization of part of Pennsylvania toll roads: