The Stealth Privatization of Pennsylvania's Bridges

[marmar]

The Stealth Privatization of Pennsylvania's Bridges

Wednesday, 29 January 2014 09:02
By Ellen Dannin, Truthout | News

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett's administration has decided to sign a 40-year contract to privatize the state's crumbling bridges, but there has been little to no media coverage of the deal and what it will mean for two generations of Pennsylvanians.

At midnight of January 20, 2014, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced that the administration of Gov. Tom Corbett finally decided to take action on the state's crumbling bridges. The action it is taking is to sign a 40-year contract to privatize Pennsylvania bridges.

The word privatization does not appear in any of the announcements. Instead, PennDOT refers to the project as a public-private partnership. However, whether called a PPP, P3, public-private partnership, contracting out or privatization, the result is the same. Infrastructure privatization - that is privatization of roads, bridges, parking garages, parking meters, airports and the like - involves signing a contract, generally for a term of 30 to 99 years.

In the case of Pennsylvania's bridges, the private contractor takes on responsibility for designing, constructing, financing and operating bridges for up to 40 years. [PennDOT, McCalls] Experience with infrastructure privatization shows what we can expect as the bridge privatization proceeds.

Pennsylvania will hire a privatization industry insider as a consultant to advise the state. International firms such as Mayer Brown, Morgan Stanley and Macquarie frequently are hired to act as the consultant and, in other cases, will sit on the other side of the table as the private contractor. Consultants often are paid a "success fee" if a privatization agreement is reached. The success fee will motivate the adviser to recommend privatizing. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21513-the-stealth-privatization-of-pennsylvanias-bridges

[El_Johns]

1. KR. What a travesty. Yeah, this will turn out well.