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Imagine a private company offers you the basic services of a state, i.e. protection of life, liberty and property in a defined territory. You pay a certain amount for those services per year. Your respective rights and duties are laid down in a written agreement between you and the provider. For everything else, you do what you want. Thus, you are a contracting party on an equal footing with a secured legal position, instead of subject to the government’s or majority’s ever changing will. And you only become a part of it if you like the offer.

President Trump will reportedly introduce a plan on Monday to privatize the air traffic control functions of the Federal Aviation Administration this week as part of a broader push for infrastructure reform. The Washington Post reports that Trump will instruct Congress to pursue privatizing air traffic control and spin it off into a nonprofit corporation. Trump could send principles for the plan to Congress as early as this week, according to the report. Trump will be joined by the CEOs of several major airlines as he makes his air traffic control announcement, ABC News reported Sunday evening.

Greater reliance on user fees, federal loans rather than grants, and corporatization are three keys to the Trump administration’s infrastructure initiative released as a part of its 2018 budget. The plan will “seek long-term reforms on how infrastructure projects are regulated, funded, delivered, and maintained,” says the six-page document. More federal funding “is not the solution,” the document says; instead, it is to “fix underlying incentives, procedures, and policies.”In building the Interstate Highway System, the fact sheet observes, “the Federal Government played a key role” in collecting and distributing monies to “fund a project with a Federal purpose.” Since then,...

This week, while Donald Trump ensnares himself in the most serious threat to his presidency to date, Congress is, to some extent, continuing with the typical business of government. A series of hearings during “Infrastructure Week” are focusing on the administration’s rumored infrastructure plan.Although the White House has been talking up private infrastructure investment as a replacement for public funding, a panel of experts told Congress that, even with perfectly executed public-private partnerships, the federal government still needs to provide its own support — especially for projects, like transit lines, that aren’t guaranteed to generate toll revenue for profit-seeking investors.This...

Texas is spending record amounts on transportation, but lawmakers worried it is not enough are considering extending a controversial program that’s helped spread tollways through some of the state’s largest areas. A bill approved this week by a House committee would give the Texas Department of Transportation a chance to add six additional projects, including the widening of Interstate 45 north of I-10 and a long-planned Hempstead Tollway, meant to relieve traffic on U.S. 290 with the potential for a commuter rail corridor. The bill, by state Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, would also allow TxDOT or regional officials the chance...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats had hoped the one big policy area they could find common ground with President Donald Trump on was infrastructure, but they don't like what they're hearing from administration officials about the transportation portion of the plan that's still in the works. Trump has promised to generate $1 trillion in infrastructure spending over 10 years. With two of his other top campaign pledges in trouble - an effort to repeal and replace the Obama administration health care law has failed so far, and without savings to the government from health care changes there may not be enough...

Texas had high hopes for the southern segments of SH 130, a 41-mile stretch of the high-speed toll road east of San Antonio. The state had put off building that stretch of road until a pair of investors stepped forward and offered what sounded like a great deal: Texas would get a big check for turning the rights to build and operate the toll road over to a private entity, a move that would give the state a new highway and a share of the tolls. The state would own the road and rake in revenue, but wouldn't have to...

A Look Into the Opaque Crystal Ball for Infrastructure Initiatives in the First 100 Days of the Trump Administration President Donald J. Trump's "America's Infrastructure First" plan is one of the Trump Administration's priorities during his first 100 days in office. Throughout the campaign, President Trump heralded his plan to build and restore highways, tunnels, airports, bridges, and water systems across America and promised a $1 trillion investment in the infrastructure sector over a 10-year period. Leaders from both parties acknowledge the nation's deteriorating infrastructure, and there have been expressions of support from both sides of the aisle for some...

President Trump has promised to eliminate regulations and rebuild the nation’s aging infrastructure. Federal agencies are awash with regulations and provisions based on the presumption that government is, and should be, the sole provider of infrastructure. But now that we understand the merits of public-private partnerships, which can provide more accountable public-purpose infrastructure, these numerous regulations and provisions serve as major obstacles preventing the improvement of highways and other infrastructure. Back in 1995, Reason Foundation published a policy study itemizing a number of these regulatory barriers. Sadly, most of them still exist today. If a state or municipal facility has...

Dear Editor, As states and municipalities around the nation struggle to find ways to afford much-needed improvements to aging and congested roadways, the Commonwealth of Virginia has established itself as an innovative leader when it comes to carefully prioritizing the state’s transportation investments and wisely leveraging private sector resources to ensure the best deal for state taxpayers. The I-66 Outside the Beltway project exemplifies this leadership, and Cintra, together with its partner Meridiam, is proud to be part of the team selected by the Commonwealth to finance, design, build, operate and maintain this more than $3 billion transformative project at...

PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump has proposed a $1 trillion plan to fix America’s infrastructure. It relies on public-private partnerships as its primary source of financing. Our country’s complex transportation network needs an overhaul, but private investment is not the answer, mainly because of the returns that investors expect. Public-private partnerships can be an excellent procurement tool, but selecting the right project is key. Virginia has been a national leader in such deals since the General Assembly passed the Public Private Partnership Act in 1995. The law was designed for the partnerships to be used as an option for certain projects if...

Veterans' Health: News headlines this week screamed about how President-elect Trump is considering a plan to partially privatize the Veterans Health Administration. Did nobody read his campaign website during the election? In July, Trump issued his 10-point plan to fix the VA. Number 10 on the list: "Mr. Trump will ensure every veteran has the choice to seek care at the VA or at a private service provider of their own choice. Under a Trump Administration, no veteran will die waiting for service. These days are over starting January 2017." At the time, we wrote that, while Trump's plan wasn't...

President-elect Donald Trump is considering moving the Department of Veterans Affairs toward privatization, a transition team official said Wednesday, a policy decision major veterans’ groups have said they would oppose.

President-elect Donald Trump met with health care executives on Wednesday to begin a serious reform of the Department of Veterans Affairs. “I’ve been saying we have to take care of our vets,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago after the meetings. “We are working on something to make it great for our veterans, because they are treated very, very unfairly.” Trump met with John Noseworthy, the President and CEO of Mayo Clinic, Paul Rothman, the CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine as well as Dr. Bruce Moskowitz, Dr. David Torchiana of Partners HealthCare and Toby Cosgrove of Cleveland Clinic, according to the...

(Download Link to entire article) The charter school deception is rooted in the shared beliefs of its founders. Corporate titans like the Walmart-creating Walton family, Bill Gates, and other very wealthy individuals have collectively spent billions seeding and sustaining this movement until states and the federal government passed laws and regulations sanctioning and subsidizing charter schools.

County leaders are hopeful that the $1 trillion infrastructure investment promised by Republican president-elect Donald Trump will have a big impact on the region. Trump has promised to prioritize infrastructure spending in his first 100 days in office. The move is one that Democrats, now in minority positions in both houses of Congress, have said they're willing to support. The plan, which is not yet fully fleshed out, looks to rely heavily on billions of dollars of infrastructure tax credits to private entities. And while Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen warned recently that weighing down the national debt with...

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Donald Trump loves the idea of infrastructure. He brings it up all the time. He wants to make an infrastructure bill a priority in his first 100 days as president. And Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have said they’d love to work with him on this."We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals," Trump promised cheering supporters on election night. "We're going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it."The...

A rare point of agreement between President-Elect Trump and Congressional Democrats is that America has an infrastructure deficit: The nation’s transportation, power, water and sewerage facilities are too often outdated and unable to reliably serve a growing population. But while the diagnosis crosses party lines, solutions are more controversial. Democrats may not be too worried about the recent increase in federal deficits, but Republicans who have made an issue of the national debt will be reluctant to produce more red ink. Likewise, tax increases to pay for new federal construction spending are off the table under Trump and a Republican-controlled...

President-elect Donald Trump said throughout his campaign for the White House that he wants major investments in U.S. infrastructure, calling for $1 trillion on infrastructure projects during his presidency.He reiterated the point in his victory speech last Wednesday. “We’re going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none.”However, major infrastructure bills are challenging pieces of legislation to pass, especially since Congress changed little in the election, says Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent...