Posted on 07/21/2006 3:32:06 PM PDT by cope85
Foreign Companies Are Buying Up American Highways and Bridges Built by U.S. Taxpayers
Associated Press ^ | Saturday July 15 | Leslie Miller
Posted on 07/16/2006 10:30:40 AM PDT by cope85
Foreign Companies Are Buying Up American Highways and Bridges Built by U.S. Taxpayers
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Roads and bridges built by U.S. taxpayers are starting to be sold off, and so far foreign-owned companies are doing the buying. On a single day in June, an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for 50 years.
Few people know that the tolls from the U.S. side of the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, go to a subsidiary of an Australian company -- which also owns a bridge in Alabama.
Some experts welcome the trend. Robert Poole, transportation director for the conservative think tank Reason Foundation, said private investors can raise more money than politicians to build new roads because these kind of owners are willing to raise tolls.
"They depoliticize the tolling decision," Poole said. Besides, he said, foreign companies have purchased infrastructure in Europe for years; only now are U.S. companies beginning to get into the business of buying roads and bridges.
Gas taxes and user fees have fueled the expansion of the nation's highway system. Thousands of miles of roads built since the 1950s changed the landscape, accelerating the growth of suburbia and creating a reliance on motor vehicles to move freight, get to work and take vacations.
In 1956, President Eisenhower pushed to create the interstate highway system for a different: to move troops and tanks and evacuate civilians.
The Bush administration's plan to let a foreign company manage U.S. ports met a storm of protest in February. But plans to sell or lease highways to companies outside the United States have not met such resistance.
John Foote, senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said the government can take over a highway in an emergency. But he objects to selling roads to raise cash.
But that is just what Chicago has done.
Last year, the city sold a 99-year lease on the eight-mile Chicago Skyway for $1.83 billion. The buyer was the same consortium that leased the Indiana Toll Road -- Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Sydney, Australia, and Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte of Madrid, Spain.
Chicago used the money to pay off debt and fund road projects. Skyway tolls rose 50 cents, to $2.50; By 2017, they will reach $5.
The Indiana Toll Road lease is a better deal, Foote thinks, because the proceeds will pay for urgent projects such as road and bridge improvements.
That need is precisely why cities and states have begun to look to foreign investors.
Between 1980 and 2004, people drove 94 percent more highway miles, according to Federal Highway Administration statistics. But the number of new highway lane miles rose by only 6 percent.
Washington is not likely to produce more money to build roads. The federal highway fund -- which will have a balance of about $16 billion by the end of 2006 -- will run out in 2009 or 2010, according to White House and congressional estimates.
About half the states now let companies build and operate roads. Many changed their laws recently to do so.
So Illinois lawmakers are examining privatizing the Illinois Tollway, New Jersey lawmakers are considering selling 49 percent of the state's two big toll roads and a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio wants to sell the turnpike.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who championed his state's toll road deal, now wants investors to build and operate a toll road from Indianapolis to Evansville.
Patrick Bauer, the Indiana House's Democratic leader, says such deals are taxpayer rip-offs.
Bauer believes Macquarie-Cintra could make $133 billion over the 75-year life of the Indiana Toll Road lease -- for which Indiana got $3.8 billion.
"In five, maybe 10 years, all that money is gone, and the tolls keep rising and the money keeps flowing into the foreign coffers," Bauer said.
Orange County, Calif., got burned by a toll-road lease for a different reason.
The road, part of state Route 91, was built and run for $130 million by California Private Transportation Company, partly owned by France-based Compagnie Financiere et Industrielle des Autoroutes. The toll road opened in 1995.
Seven years later, Orange County was looking at gridlock. But it could not build more roads because of a provision in the lease. So it bought back the lease -- for $207.5 million.
To encourage more domestic investment in highways, former Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta made a pitch to Wall Street on May 23.
"The time is now for United States investors -- including our financial, construction and engineering institutions -- to get involved in transportation investments," said Mineta, who left office July 7.
U.S. companies are getting the message.
San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co., along with Cintra, received approval on June 29 for a 50-year lease to build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for $1.3 billion.
That is part of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's vision to attract more than $80 billion in private funds for roads by 2030. He wants a new tollway from Oklahoma to Mexico and the Gulf Coast, and one from Shreveport, La., and Texarkana to Mexico. Cintra-Zachry reached a $7.2 billion deal last year to develop the project's first phase. The announcement of a $1.3 billion deal in June was part of that $7.2 billion agreement, said Perry's spokesman, Robert Black.
"In Texas, our population is going to double in the next 40 years and our current infrastructure can't handle that growth," Black said.
Not everyone in Texas buys the idea. Harris County officials recently voted against selling three toll roads. Also, independent gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn opposes Perry's toll road plan.
"Texas freeways belong to Texans, not foreign companies," she said
New World Order Rising? - Thoughts on the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/743512/posts
Feds stonewalling on 'super-state' plan?
Agency fails to respond to FOIA request on 'North American union'
World Net Daily | July 19 2006
The U.S. Department of Commerce appears to be stonewalling a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain complete disclosure of a congressionally unauthorized plan to implement a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada that apparently could lead to a North American union.
The plan is being implemented through an office within the Department of Commerce as the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America," under the direction of Geri Word, who is listed as working in the department's North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, office.
As WorldNetDaily previously reported, the White House has established executive branch working groups documented on the Commerce website SPP.gov. The Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, was issued as a joint press statement by President Bush, Mexican President Vincente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005.
Commerce has missed a statutory requirement to respond to the FOIA request, filed by author Jerome R. Corsi, within 20 businesses days.
In an e-mail from Bobbie Parsons on behalf of Robert Dolan, the department acknowledged receipt of the FOIA request on June 19. WorldNetDaily first reported Corsi’s FOIA request June 20.
Robert McQuire, attorney for Corsi, emailed Commerce Monday, notifying the agency of the statutory violation in their failure to respond.
Yesterday, McGuire received an e-mail response from Brenda Dolan, the departmental Freedom of Information and Privacy Act officer.
Dolan wrote:
The International Trade Administration, which is a bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce, was assigned lead action on your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request number CRRIF 06-376, for information concerning the Prosperity Working Groups. I have contacted Linda Bell, FOIA officer, ITA regarding the status of your pending FOIA request. I will provide the status of your pending request as soon as I receive word from Ms. Bell.
McQuire told WND that this response was unacceptable.
"The Department of Commerce skipped a deadline required by law," he explained. "The act's 20-day requirement relates to the department as a whole, not its sub-units."
McQuire also told WND he had copied Bell on his original e-mail copy of the FOIA request.
"I used Linda Bell's e-mail address as listed on the DOC website and her email bounced back," he said. "DOC has especially poor grounds for the delay, especially since DOC sent the request to Ms. Bell internally as well."
Corsi believes the department is stonewalling the FOIA request.
"The Bush administration does not want the American public to know how far along the creation of a new regional government, the North American union, is proceeding behind closed doors," Corsi said. "President Bush is acting as if he believes the U.S. Constitution is nothing more than a meaningless piece of paper. The American public have a right to know what the executive branch is doing with SPP and the FOIA request was designed to get that information released."
Attorney McQuire was equally firm.
"We thought we might encounter some recalcitrance," he explained to WND, "but I am frankly shocked that we had received no response at all. The department acknowledged its receipt of our request on June 19. The requirements of the Freedom of Information Act are quite clear: The government is allowed to respond to a FOIA request in many ways, but the complete failure to respond within 20 business days is simply not an option."
Wendys. Kodak. Harley Davidson.
I need to work on my sarcasm skills because you misunderstood my post. You're a nut.
Ping
LOL. Well-played.
Hey, he didn't specify..... :^)
Corsi has become quite the reactionary lately. Oh well.
Personal Attack!! ;-)
Our new masters will force us to eat Canadian bacon tortillas with mango chutney.
BUMPping
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my Viking Kitty/ZOT ping list!. . . don't be shy.
I guess this means zotoids have stolen our stealth technology!
Neat pic.
I suspect there may be numerous American workers that feel the same about you and your job...If they are worth less, why are you not???
In fact, I don't drive a truck and likely don't do the same job you do...I'd like to see all of you take a 50-75% cut in wages...I could save even 'more' money when I shop at China-Mart...
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