Key members of Congress warned governors this week against embracing partnerships with the private sector to pay for roads and other transportation projects, an admonition that resonated in Virginia, where officials have increasingly made use of the controversial agreements.
In a letter Monday, the chair of the U.S. House’s transportation committee and the head of the panel’s highways subcommittee spoke out against public-private partnerships, concerned the deals can weaken the federal highway system while fattening businesses’ bank accounts.
The message comes amid rising local criticism of Virginia’s Public- Private Transportation Act and signals further erosion of support for such partnerships among the Democratic majority in Congress.
While Congress cannot nix deals already in place, states that have agreed to leases that lawmakers do not like could be penalized when Congress considers future transportation-funding bills.
“These deals make good business sense to the companies that are investing in the projects, but we have serious concerns about whether these transactions offer a net balance of benefits for the American public,” wrote Reps. James Oberstar, D-Minn., and Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.
Virginia has put hundreds of millions of dollars into such partnerships in the hopes of attracting private funds to develop essential transportation improvements quickly and stretch the state budget.
Critics, however, charge that the commonwealth is depending on a flawed transportation act at the foundation for these deals — an act that has failed to ensure adequate competition, allowed the private sector to skimp on its investment and shrouded the projects in secrecy through closed-door negotiations.
Some partnerships have been formed in Virginia in which the private group, not the state, pays to build new toll roads and is allowed to keep a substantial portion of the revenue. Locally, such deals are being used to construct high-occupancy toll lanes on Interstate 95, Interstate 395 and the Capital Beltway.
The transportation act is also being used to structure the 23-mile extension of Metro to Dulles.
What is spurring the shift to private partnerships is that government funding is inadequate to meet needs, said Trip Pollard of the Southern Environmental Law Center. “People are looking for creative ways [to build] road projects.”
“The problem,” Pollard said, “is alot of these [public-private partnerships] are not primarily in the public’s interest.”
Some states have agreed to turn control of a toll road over to a private firm in exchange for a large one-time up-front payment. The firm then collects the toll revenue for a long period to recoup its payment to the state and make a profit.
Kevin Hall, a spokesman for Gov. Tim Kaine, said Virginia’s Public-Private Transportation Act has safeguards to prevent the sort of scenarios that have upset members of the now Democratic Congress. He pointed out that Kaine, a Democrat, testified last year before a Republican-controlled House committee about Virginia’s public-private successes.
The Bush administration has actively promoted public-private partnerships.
“The issues that have raised concern have not been issues in Virginia because we do it differently,” Hall said. “Specifically the Virginia law has a requirement about benefits being focused on the toll payer. All the funds have to stay in the corridor where they are generated to benefit the infrastructure and the people using it.”
Current Projects
The following Public Private Transportation Act projects are either pending or under construction in Virginia:
» 10 interchanges and widening on Route 28 in Fairfax and Loudoun counties
» High occupancy toll (HOT) lanes on Interstate 95/395
» HOT lanes on the Capital Beltway
» Coalfields Expressway through Wise, Dickenson and Buchanan counties.
» Route 58 widening from Hillsville to Stuart
» The Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project
» Improvements to the Interstate 81 corridor
» Route 460 improvements between Suffolk and Petersburg
Source: Virginia Department of Transportation
