SC: State's toll road goes bust
The first public-private partnership toll road established as a
not-for-profit corporation has gone bust. The Connector 2000
Association, which operates a sixteen-mile, four-lane toll road linking
Interstates 85 and 385 in southern Greenville County, South Carolina,
announced last week that it was in default on its financial
obligations. “Traffic on the Southern Connector was inadequate to
permit the association to collect sufficient toll revenues to pay debt
service on the bonds which came due January 1, 2010,” a Connector 2000
Association statement explained. Like other highly-leveraged tolling
efforts, the Connector was hampered by unrealistic traffic projections
and rosy financial scenarios for an area expected to experience an
economic boom. “The expected growth in the region has yet to
materialize,” the toll road’s 2008 annual report admitted. “This
factor, the recession and consumer resistance to the payment of tolls
(the Southern Connector Toll Road is the only toll road in Upstate
South Carolina) have all contributed to the lower-than-forecasted
traffic demands.”
The Truth About Cars
WA: Builders' lobby pushes workers' comp initiative
A politically active construction-industry group wants voters to decide
whether Washington's workers' compensation system should face private
competition, a move bitterly opposed by organized labor and top
Democratic lawmakers.
The Seattle Times
IN: Ind.to launch 'hybrid' welfare system
Indiana's human services agency is expected to roll out its ''hybrid''
welfare intake program, aimed at correcting problems that arose when it
tried to privatize the system, in 10 southwestern counties next
week....Under the hybrid system, which follows the state's aborted
effort to turn welfare intake completely over to private vendors, many
state and private case workers will shift from call centers into local
offices to give people more personal contact with those making
decisions about their food stamps, Medicaid and other
benefits...Problems with privatized welfare, including documents
turning up lost after being submitted by clients, lengthy hold times
for the call centers and too many errors in processing benefits, led
FSSA Secretary Anne Murphy to halt its rollout and Gov. Mitch Daniels
to fire Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp. as the lead vendor on the
privatized system.
The New York Times
