Thread: **SELL--off of ALL STATES public works to private partieS-

This is only a part of this pdf...HELP..I am having trouble coping it ....Because it has 2 columns and as you try to copy a column.... parts of the other column ...get highlited and inserted out of place in what you are actually coping and it distorts the text coping....I HAD TO COPY LINE BY LINE...( IT IS LONG BUT VERY INDEPT....).
I WILL BE HERE TILL NEXT YEAR....maybe someone can help me and copy the whole document and post it here...THIS PFD IS
IS VERY IMPORTANT EXPLAINATION TO WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR OUR INFRASTRUCTURE....THEFT OF .. ALL OUR STATES HIGHWAYS......WHAT OUR STATE GOVERNMENTS IS DOING..CHANGING OUR LAWS ...SO THEY CAN AND ARE SELLING OUT OUR STATE ASSETS.........
http://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2006/2006_20-29/2006-29/pdf/42-49_629_ecorohaty.pdf

EIR Economics

Rohatyn Steals Public
Property Coast to Coast
by Marcia Merry Baker

EIR July 21, 2006

As of this Summer, 22 out of 50 states have made changes in But beyond greed, stripping down infrastructure is an at their laws to permit the sell-off of various of their public works to private parties. At least 43 such sell-off deals are up before state legislatures for consideration-from city- or state-owned real estate (parks, housing, hospital sites, muse-ums), to ports, airports, and especially highways.
The City of Chicago recently sold a 90-year lease on its Skyway for merely $1.3 billion in upfront cash.
On June 30, Indiana signed off on a 75-year private lease to its northern Indiana Turnpike for $3.85 billion. A 50-year lease on the 8.8-mile Pocahontas Parkway in Richmond, Virginia was let earlier this year for $522 million.
Lyndon LaRouche, reviewing the picture, stated the principle involved: "These projects were built with public funds They cannot be privatized. And anyone who does it, is going to be accused of theft. No one should pay tolls on privatized public highways. They shouldn't pay them. They should defy the tolls!
"This was paid for by the public. It's public property. You cannot sell public property in this way. It is immoral. It is illegal. No one should pay a toll on a privatized public highway." Leading the charge for the sell-off of public infrastructure is Felix Rohatyn, in league with his longtime financial house, Lazard, and related circles, who are the very same networks actively destroying U.S. industry to begin with, and thus, the economic base of local government.
Why? There is the obvious loot to be made off jacking up tolls, utility rates, fees, speculation, and stealing in all kinds of ways. Multibillions of dollars are involved. Just picture in your mind, if every 20 miles, a new private investor's toll booth appears on your highway: Lazard, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group, Merrill machine Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and so on.

But beyond greed, stripping down infrastructure is an attack on the nation-state itself. That is what's at stake. Rohatyn is acting on behalf of the interests of those financial networks opposing nations and the public welfare outright. Their history traces back directly to the 1920s and 1930s cartels and banking circles that backed Hitler and fascist economics. EIR has "written the book" on this.*
You can see the same point in Dick Cheney's behavior, acting in service of the same networks. His pursuits of war against Iraq, Afghanistan, and now threats to Iran, are not simply in furtherance of gross profiteering for Halliburton and the like-which are crimes enough. Cheney is out to destroy the very system of nation-states itself. He personally has been working with Rohatyn and George Shultz to privatize huge parts of the U.S. military since 1991. If you takeaway public infrastructure services-transportation, communications, water, power, housing, sanitation, public cultural facilities, public security, and defense-the conditions of existence for the benefit of present and future populations, the nation-state will not exist. Look at how the United States grew as a young nation, by the impact of policies of internal improvements of all kinds, fostered as government policy. For example, modes of transportation were successively
improved, from the first canals and corduroy turnpikes, to the railroads, mass urban transit, and airways. Now we see the principle involved under direct attack. In fact, the infrastructure sell-off is a violation of the Constitution. The Constitution gives sovereignty to the Federal government, and you can't privatize the Federal government The general welfare cannot be privatized.
Even British law outlaws this, LaRouche likes to point out, when it comes to a privatized toll road that was paid for originally by the people. "It belongs to the people. There can be no tolls on it. It's the public highway. Even the British law-even that which was adopted under King John the First, the Magna Carta-even the Magna Carta outlaws this. The King's Highway cannot be usurped!"

* The Rohatyn/Lazard nexus of companies connects back, by direct lineage and policy, continuously with its predecessor cartels and financial powersthat backed Nazi economics in the 1920s and 1930s, in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Britain, and elsewhere. Lazard itself, and Rohatyn's senior and mentor at Lazard, Andre´ Meyer
were identified explicitly by U.S. intelligence in the 1940s, as part of the Hitler-backing financial crowd, called "Synarchists."
The dossier on this, "Rohatyn's Fascist Roots Are Showing" (EIR, June 30, 2006), is now in mass circulation in a LaRouche Political Action Committee pamphlet, "Time Is Running Out For the U.S.A." (July 2006.

(See www. larouchepac.com.) This title, from a statement by LaRouche, refers to how the Congress, and key institutions, beginning with the Democratic Party, are so far still refusing to act in the face of the crisis and who is causing it. In particular, Congress is turning its back on the takedown of the auto/machine Lynch tool sector, the heart of the industrial existence of the United States.
EIR July 21, 2006

'Benito Mussolini Laws'
Figure 1 names the 22 states
where laws have been changed to
allow the private infrastructure grab.
Texas amended its state transportation
code in 2003. Many states made
changes only in 2005 or since. The
battles have been fierce, as in Indiana,
where the private-sale authorization
for the state toll road was
passed by only one vote in the legislature.
The entire Pacific Coast, the
Southeast, and the Gulf States, except
for Mississippi, have now
passed enabling laws. Illinois has not
yet passed such laws; Chicago sold
off its Skyway, which was municipally
owned.
LaRouche called these new state
law changes, "Benito Mussolini Laws." And if Mussolini is here, can Hitler be far behind? The Mussolini era was characterized by the most extreme privateering of bridges, housing, and every kind of public works. He advocated privatization of telecommunications and the post office. One Mussolini quote presents his view: "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power"-that is, private corporations take over. Mussolini's early Finance Minister,Giuseppe Volpi, later took what he considered a much more important post, as president of the Fascist Federation of Industrialists.
How does Rohatyn come off promoting Mussolini Laws?
He has a special double-speak lexicon for law changes, saying that governments must allow new "public private partnerships" (PPPs) for government services and infrastructure. He avoids saying, "privatization," which is now a has-been term, because of public disgust over the many cases of swindles and looting of public property over the 1990s-from water
systems to schools. The state law tally mapped in Figure 1, comes from the website of the National Council for Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) at ncppp.org. They are keeping close tabs on legal changes, because they represent the firms lined up for the buyouts, ranging from Bechtel Infrastructure Corp., to Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, United Water/Suez, Veolia Water, to dozens of others, including government entities. The PPP Council uses the expression, "PPP Enabling Laws" and is in high gear to coax or coerce state and local officials to give up governmental rights. Public In particular, state laws commonly need to be changed for takeovers of localized links in the 47,000-mile national interstate highway grid-now the infrastructure takeover-of-choice for the swarm of multinationals in the game. For years, privateers have already been active in buying and looting public assets that are owned by cities and counties, especially municipal water and sewage systems.

On Sept. 21, 2005, a Congressional PPP Caucus was announced, headed by Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) and Rep.- Chris Cannon (R-Utah). Virginia, where Allen was Governor (1994-9, is considered one of the national models for PPPs. It is home to the 14-mile privately owned Greenway Toll Road, the first one in the nation since the 1800s. In 1988, a planned Virginia Department of Transportation highway extension westward past Dulles Airport was instead authorized for a privately owned highway. The road didn't open-until 1995; the state lost funds outright on the so-called public-private partnership; a sequence of private owners gained. In 2005, the giant Macquarie Infrastructure Group took it over. The toll is now $3.20 for a one-way, 14-mile trip.
Yet Allen said at the PPP Caucus inauguration, "PPPs have resulted in the savings of hundreds of millions of dollars for the state." Now running for President, Allen is known in Virginia as the "PP candidate-a diaper boy for Rohatyn."
On March 27 of this year, Rohatyn staged a PPP event in Washington, D.C., with former Sen. Warren Rudman, the co-chairman with Rohatyn of a group he founded in 2004, the Commission for Public Infrastructure, to promote government infrastructure sell-off. They released their "Guiding-Principles for Strengthening America's Infrastructure," whose language makes the classic pitch: "Deeper capital markets and greater experience infrastructure have dramatically improved the ability of the private concessector
to play a central role in infrastructure provision. The old public works dichotomy-the public sector buys and manages while the private sector builds-is being replaced by new types of public-private partnerships. Increased private sector activity will continue to improve the efficiency of infrastructure markets. Entrepreneurs should be encouraged to put -their capital at risk in order to create infrastructure that meets the needs of users" (emphasis added).
Among the 12 signators were California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, and representatives of buy-out companies including Bernard Schwartz, retired chairman and CEO of Loral Space and Communications, and Frederick B. Whittemore, advisory director of Morgan Stanley.44 Economics EIR July 21, 2006

NOTE: P.S. I BELIEVE NJ ALSO IN OCT 2006 CHANGED OUR CONSTITUTION/AND/ OR LAWS... SO THEY CAN SELL OURS.....

THIS LINK HAS BEEN REMOVED ..IT WAS ENGLAND'S PPS PROJECTS.....
http://www.ppp.gov.ie/projects/PPP%20Pr ... v%2006.xls

THESE SITES ARE BEING TAKEN DOWN...SO WE CAN'T FIND OUT WHAT'S GOING ON.....MY ADVICE IS WHEN YOU FIND IMPORTANT INFO
SAVE THE TEXT OF THE WEB PAGE....TO SHARE....

What's a 'Rohatyn'?
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3 ... hatyn.html


This article appears in the January 6, 2006 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. What's a `Rohatyn'?

by Tony Papert

Researched by a team coordinated by Pierre Beaudry.

When a proposal of Felix Rohatyn's appeared in the Washington Post of Dec. 13, 2005, counterposing his own plan, to Lyndon LaRouche's well-known proposals for national economic recovery through long-term, low-interest Federal credits for vital infrastructure-building, leading Congressional Democrats tended at once to realize that there was something "fishy" in what Rohatyn was suggesting, but many were unsure about exactly what was wrong with it.

Small wonder.

Most Americans, even among those who imagine that they have known him for many years, lack any understanding of who or what Felix Rohatyn is. Why? Because Rohatyn is neither an American, nor does he resemble anything which more than very few living Americans have ever knowingly encountered. Not only does he belong to a species—the European Synarchist—with which they have not the slightest acquaintance. Worse, their ignorance of European history, or, what is the same thing, the dumbed-down, flat-earth versions of history which they have swallowed, leave no room for the even possible existence of such a species as Rohatyn's.

What is the European Synarchist? A definition will be provided, but first, given the cults of stupidity which pervade our society, first it is necessary to demonstrate that something exists "out there" to be defined.

The U.S. diplomat, Ambassador Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., wrote to President Roosevelt from London on Jan. 7, 1942, describing a clique which controlled the fascist Vichy government of France, the government which (more or less) ruled that country everywhere south of the German zone of direct occupation. "This group," he said, "should be regarded not as Frenchmen, any more than their corresponding numbers in Germany should be regarded as Germans, for the interests of both groups are so intermingled as to be indistinguishable; their whole interest is focussed upon furtherance of their industrial and financial stakes."[1]

Ambassador Biddle went on to detail the proof that the "Banque Worms clique" controlled most parts of the Vichy government, with a special emphasis on total control over all economic and related portfolios. On paper, Banque Worms had been established earlier by the Lazard Frères bank of Paris, on behalf of the Worms family of industrialists. In reality, the closely integrated Lazard Brothers bank of London, Lazard Frères of Paris, and Lazard Freres of Wall Street, had established Banque Worms as a "cutout," a vehicle through which top financier families could deploy the forces of the Synarchy

Click here: Land Line Magazine: The Business Magazine for Professional Truckers
http://www.landlinemag.com/todays_news/ ... 306-04.htm
December 13, 2006


Goldman Sachs chalks up record profits in 2006


The New York-based investment banking company that made the financial arrangements for privatizing the Indiana Toll Road had an exceptional financial year in 2006.

In fact, The New York Times reports that Goldman Sachs did so well, each of its 26,000 employees will end the year with an average of $622,000 in salary and bonuses.
It looks as though Goldman Sachs can afford to be generous – its profits increased to around $9.5 billion this year, up 70 percent from 2005.

nOTE:
THEY ARE OPENING UP TO NJ...NOW ISN'T THAT A LITTLE CLOSE TO OUR GOVERNOR CORZINE...AND HIS INTEREST IN PRIVATIZING OUR INFRASTRUCTURE??

New Jersey
To Toll Free Highways?!? [Archive] - Wired New York Forum
http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/archi ... 11485.html

View Full Version : New Jersey To Toll Free Highways?!?
JCMAN320
November 15th, 2006, 11:01 PM

Turning free highways into fee highways
To bring in revenue, state treasurer looks at establishing tolls on some roads

Wednesday, November 15, 2006
BY TOM FEENEY
Star-Ledger Staff

In its continuing search for new ways to raise money, the Corzine administration is considering converting free highways into private toll roads.

The administration -- in the most preliminary way -- has asked for proposals to study the conversion of Routes 78, 80 and 95, the Pulaski Skyway and the section of Route 440 in Middlesex County between the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway into toll roads. This idea grew out of previous discussions about selling or leasing the state's toll roads.

During interviews yesterday, state Treasurer Bradley Abelow and Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri confirmed that they had advertised for an engineering consultant and a traffic and revenue consultant to help determine what those roads might be worth if they were sold or leased to a private company. They stressed that the move was part of a wide-ranging state effort to look at any possible way to raise revenue.

"I think it might have started when I asked Kris why we have tolls on some roads and not others," Abelow said. "What would be the value of having tolls on other roads? It's not necessarily something we want to do or intend to do, but at least let's understand what it means."

The state hired the financial services firm UBS in September to study its assets and suggest ways they might be "monetized" -- that is, sold or leased to raise cash. The request for qualifications that led to the hiring of UBS made no mention of the non-toll roads. The contract with UBS calls for the firm to report to Abelow in mid-October. That report has yet to be made public.

Abelow's office issued separate requests for proposals for the two consulting positions Oct. 12. Interested firms had until Oct. 26 to respond. Abelow's spokesman, Tom Vincz -- who described the process as a study of "what's possible rather than what's probable" -- said the responses are still being evaluated and no one has been hired.

Once they're hired, the consultants will have 90 days to complete their work. Their studies will include the four non-toll roads as well as the Pulaski Skyway, the Turnpike, the Parkway and the Atlantic City Expressway. The last three already are toll roads. T

he engineering consultant will study the condition of the roads, analyze how much it would cost to bring them into good repair, review the maintenance costs, offer an opinion on how long they might last and prepare a "transportation asset analysis," according to the request for qualifications issued by Abelow's office.

The traffic and revenue consultant will review and collect information on traffic volume, toll revenues and other data that might help the state determine the value of the roads, according to the second request for qualifications.

"It's entirely premature to say what the value of any of these roads might be," Kolluri said. "It's entirely premature to say that there is a value attached to any of those roads. That's going to take some time."

One issue the consultants will study is how adding tolls on a free highway might affect traffic volume on nearby roads, according to the document Abelow's office issued when it began its search for a consultant.

Federal transportation law allows states to set up tolls on interstate highways such as Routes 78, 80 and 95 with the approval of the Federal Highway Administration.
"It would be a bold undertaking to do this," said C. Kenneth Orski, editor and publisher of Innovation Briefs, an industry newsletter. "It would be a precedent -- and a bold precedent -- to take away existing general purpose lanes and convert them into toll lanes.

"Technically, it could be done, but it would be politically hazardous."
There are other models around the country of ways a private, for-profit concern might get involved in an existing non-toll highway, said Peter Samuel, publisher of Toll Roads Magazine, another trade publication.

For example, there are two interstate highways in Virginia where private companies have proposed building additional lanes in exchange for the right to charge tolls in those lanes. If those projects get built, the roads will have the same number of free lanes plus some toll lanes for drivers willing to pay a fee to escape congestion.

Those lanes, which have been done on public highways in Minnesota, Colorado, California and elsewhere, are usually known as H.O.T. lanes. Critics sometimes refer to them as "Lexus lanes" to suggest that they offer a remedy for congestion only for those with money.


Tom Feeney may be reached at
tfeeney@starledger.com or (973) 392-1790.




Click here: New Jersey To Toll Free Highways?!? [Archive] - Wired New York Forum
http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/archi ... 11485.html

View Full Version : New Jersey To Toll Free Highways?!?
JCMAN320
November 15th, 2006, 11:01 PM

Turning free highways into fee highways
To bring in revenue, state treasurer looks at establishing tolls on some roads

Wednesday, November 15, 2006
BY TOM FEENEY
Star-Ledger Staff

In its continuing search for new ways to raise money, the Corzine administration is considering converting free highways into private toll roads.

The administration -- in the most preliminary way -- has asked for proposals to study the conversion of Routes 78, 80 and 95, the Pulaski Skyway and the section of Route 440 in Middlesex County between the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway into toll roads. This idea grew out of previous discussions about selling or leasing the state's toll roads.

During interviews yesterday, state Treasurer Bradley Abelow and Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri confirmed that they had advertised for an engineering consultant and a traffic and revenue consultant to help determine what those roads might be worth if they were sold or leased to a private company. They stressed that the move was part of a wide-ranging state effort to look at any possible way to raise revenue.

"I think it might have started when I asked Kris why we have tolls on some roads and not others," Abelow said. "What would be the value of having tolls on other roads? It's not necessarily something we want to do or intend to do, but at least let's understand what it means."

The state hired the financial services firm UBS in September to study its assets and suggest ways they might be "monetized" -- that is, sold or leased to raise cash. The request for qualifications that led to the hiring of UBS made no mention of the non-toll roads.

The contract with UBS calls for the firm to report to Abelow in mid-October. That report has yet to be made public.
Abelow's office issued separate requests for proposals for the two consulting positions Oct. 12. Interested firms had until Oct. 26 to respond. Abelow's spokesman, Tom Vincz -- who described the process as a study of "what's possible rather than what's probable" -- said the responses are still being evaluated and no one has been hired.

Once they're hired, the consultants will have 90 days to complete their work. Their studies will include the four non-toll roads as well as the Pulaski Skyway, the Turnpike, the Parkway and the Atlantic City Expressway. The last three already are toll roads.

The engineering consultant will study the condition of the roads, analyze how much it would cost to bring them into good repair, review the maintenance costs, offer an opinion on how long they might last and prepare a "transportation asset analysis," according to the request for qualifications issued by Abelow's office.

The traffic and revenue consultant will review and collect information on traffic volume, toll revenues and other data that might help the state determine the value of the roads, according to the second request for qualifications.

"It's entirely premature to say what the value of any of these roads might be," Kolluri said. "It's entirely premature to say that there is a value attached to any of those roads. That's going to take some time."

One issue the consultants will study is how adding tolls on a free highway might affect traffic volume on nearby roads, according to the document Abelow's office issued when it began its search for a consultant.

Federal transportation law allows states to set up tolls on interstate highways such as Routes 78, 80 and 95 with the approval of the Federal Highway Administration.

"It would be a bold undertaking to do this," said C. Kenneth Orski, editor and publisher of Innovation Briefs, an industry newsletter. "It would be a precedent -- and a bold precedent -- to take away existing general purpose lanes and convert them into toll lanes.

"Technically, it could be done, but it would be politically hazardous."

There are other models around the country of ways a private, for-profit concern might get involved in an existing non-toll highway, said Peter Samuel, publisher of Toll Roads Magazine, another trade publication.

For example, there are two interstate highways in Virginia where private companies have proposed building additional lanes in exchange for the right to charge tolls in those lanes. If those projects get built, the roads will have the same number of free lanes plus some toll lanes for drivers willing to pay a fee to escape congestion.

Those lanes, which have been done on public highways in Minnesota, Colorado, California and elsewhere, are usually known as H.O.T. lanes. Critics sometimes refer to them as "Lexus lanes" to suggest that they offer a remedy for congestion only for those with money.

NOTE:
I READ OUR LAST GOV. MCGREEVY HAD THIS study OF its assets and suggest ways they might be "monetized" -- that is, sold or leased to raise cash DONE WHILE HE WAS IN OFFICE


NET FOR CUBA INTERNATIONAL - NEWS
http://www.netforcuba.org/News-EN/2005/Oct/News797.htm

NEWS
UBS Dealings in Iran, Cuba to Be Probed
By MEGHAN CLYNE -
Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 10, 2005

WASHINGTON - The world's largest "wealth management" firm, UBS, will be investigated by Congress for possibly laundering money for two state sponsors of terrorism, Cuba and Iran, lawmakers here told The New York Sun.
The Swiss bank, which operates a large financial services business in America, will be pressed about $3.9 billion deposited in UBS accounts by the Castro regime, according to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican of Florida, who first announced the impending investigation on Friday. Possible improper financial dealings with the Islamic Republic of Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq will also be subject to scrutiny, she said.

In 2003, American soldiers liberating Iraq discovered $762 million in American currency stashed in hideouts belonging to Saddam. According to Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, a Federal Reserve Bank probe traced the cash to UBS and other international financial firms. While investigating the Swiss bank's possible business relationship with Saddam's dictatorship, it was discovered that the firm - as part of a program with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in which UBS allowed clients to retire old banknotes and replace them with fresh currency - had also conducted transactions with Cuba, Iran, Libya, and Yugoslavia.

READ FULL STORY..ABOVE LINK

Strapped States Try New Route, Lease Toll Roads to Foreign Firms

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 75_pf.html

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

©Â*2006Â*The Washington Post Company

Luddites Pay Double To Use IL Toll Roads
Luddites Pay Double To Use IL Toll Roads 01/03/2005 06:04 AM

theodp writes "Effective Jan. 1 at midnight, drivers on Illinois toll roads who refuse to or are unable to shell out $50 for an I-PASS are char ged twice as much to use the tollway system as those who use the transponders to pay their tolls. Critics say the charge-$1-to-process-$1 scheme amounts to extortion." Northern California is pushing something similar to get more people to use what they call FastPass here, offering discounts to users. To be honest, it was a bit surprising that such systems weren't more popular out here when I moved from New York, where the EZPass system is ridiculously popular -- to the point that the majority of tollbooths on the major bridges and tunnels seem to be EZPass only. It also makes some sense that tolls manned by humans would cost extra -- as it is more costly for the government to pay for workers. It's not that different than when some banks started charging people to speak to a human teller rather than an ATM. Of course, there are some questions about privacy when it comes to these RFID-enabled tollbooth systems, but that's not the issue that's being discussed here. The one area where the Illinois rule is troublesome is that it requires $50 down to get one of these devices, which may be a bit steep for many on limited incomes. Also, it's still quite annoying that the various electronic tollbooth systems don't all work together. Some of them can work across multiple states, but there are at least four different systems that don't appear to work together.