Headlines

1. Proposal in Texas for a public-private toll road system raises an outcry
2. 9th Circuit: No sovereign immunity for DA contractors
3. Hundreds attend meeting on NJ’s Corzine toll plan; Demo at statehouse
4. NJ tolls plan is dead unless revised, Corzine is notified by opponents
5. CA toll road agency appeals coastal commission decision
6. Drink the kool-aid: DOT holds PPP summit
7. Chicago’s Daley looks to oursource parking meters
8. Chicago Mayor Daley’s plan to privatize Midway Airport is gaining altitude
9. $3B debt for roads, transit may cut PA turnpike lease price
10. RI: Prison counseling may go private
11. Va. sues Texas collection agency over child support payments
12. State officials, competing firms spar over Texas’ specialty license plate business
13. N.C. schools rethink private owners

News Summaries

1. Proposal in Texas for a public-private toll road system raises an outcry
Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.” Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the state’s — or probably any state’s — history, that would stretch well into the century and, if completed in full, end up costing around $200 billion, according to an article in The New York Times.

2. 9th Circuit: No sovereign immunity for DA contractors
Private companies that run diversion programs administered by dozens of California district attorneys are now open to legal attack, reports Law.com. A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled Wednesday that state sovereign immunity does not extend to American Corrective Counseling Services, a private contractor hired by the Santa Clara County DA’s office to go after individuals who passed bad checks. Deepak Gupta, an attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based Public Citizen Litigation Group who argued the plaintiff’s case, said the opinion is especially important in an age of increased privatization of governmental functions. "What we got in this case is a very scholarly, thoughtful treatment of this issue," Gupta said, "not just with check diversion, but as it relates to all private corporations that try to shield themselves in sovereign immunity." Under state law, check bouncers can avoid prosecution by paying the money back and attending a class, which is administered by companies like ACCS. The company faces a proposed class action for violations of the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, among other statutes. The plaintiff, Elena del Campo, alleges ACCS sent letters threatening her with prosecution when she didn’t pay the full amount demanded by the company. Northern District Judge James Ware ruled that ACCS could not use sovereign immunity to toss the suit.

3. Hundreds attend meeting on Corzine toll plan: Demo at statehouse
NJ Gov. Jon S. Corzine continued his efforts to promote his plan to boost tolls on some of the nation’s busiest highways, drawing a mixed reception from a crowd of more than 500 people in Mercer County on Saturday, reports Newday. Several people questioned the governor on whether he had made enough budget cuts and whether the sharp toll increases would flood local roads with truck traffic. Meanwhile, others said they understood that something needed to be done to repair the state’s chronically troubled finances. Corzine wants to use the toll money to pay off at least half of $32 billion in state debt and fund transportation projects for 75 years. Meanwhile, the NJ Community blog reports on a demonstration at the statehouse against the toll plan: "Pigs flew over the Statehouse Friday. Rubber-balloon pigs, that is. They were pink and wore smiles. More than 700 chanting, placard-waving demonstrators — taking their cue from a line in Gov. Corzine’s State of the State speech — rallied in front of the Statehouse to protest Corzine’s 75- or 99-year plan to increase road tolls to halve the state debt and bankroll transportation projects.At one point, Katherine Koridek — age 11 — of Sterling was picked up over the podium, where the crowd roared that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren could be paying for Corzine’s plan. The governor had said “pigs will fly over the Statehouse” before spending cuts and tax increases rescue the state’s financial situation.""

4. NJ tolls plan is dead unless revised, Corzine is notified by opponents
NJ Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s plan to sharply raise tolls is all but dead, according to influential Democrats and every Republican state legislator, who have warned that he has to modify his plan substantially if he expects to win their support, reports The New York Times. Mr. Corzine’s plan to raise up to $38 billion in bonds by increasing tolls 50 percent every four years from 2010 to 2022 had been criticized by various Republicans since it was unveiled last month, but on Thursday all 49 Republican state legislators declared their opposition. More jarring to Mr. Corzine was the defection on Thursday of three notable Democrats, including his former colleague in the Unites States Senate, Frank R. Lautenberg, and State Senator John H. Adler of Camden County, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

5. CA toll road agency appeals coastal commission decision
Toll road officials have filed an appeal over the California Coastal Commission’s rejection of a proposed toll road that would cut through a popular beachfront state park in Orange County. The appeal was filed Friday with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Transportation Corridor Agencies says the commerce department has the authority to override the commission’s conclusion that the road would violate environmental laws which regulate development along the state’s coastline. The commission voted 8-2 on Wednesday to side with environmentalists, surfers and others who said the extension would have destroyed a large area of environmentally sensitive habitat and wetland, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

6. Drink the kool-aid: DOT holds PPP summit
Land Line magazine reports on the recent U.S. Department of Transportation summit on public-private partnerships or PPPs. "U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters was scheduled as the keynote speaker but another DOT representative spoke in her place. Peters is among those who are heavily promoting private investment in U.S. infrastructure. “These tend to be cheerleading sessions,” Mary Joyce of Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association told Land Line. “It’s a big cheering session for PPPs, tolling and privatization. They try to get state officials to attend and they try to get them to drink the Kool-Aid and tell them their solution to transportation problems is tolling, congestion pricing, and public-private partnerships.”"

7. Daley looks to oursource parking meters
Motorists would pay more to park at Chicago’s 36,161 metered spaces — and even higher prices during peak periods in congested areas — in exchange for more cashless payment and pay-by-phone options, under a privatization plan advanced Friday, reports the Chicago Sun Times. Buoyed by the $2.4 billion gravy train of revenue generated by privatizing the Chicago Skyway and downtown parking garages and the prospect of an even bigger windfall at Midway Airport, Mayor Daley on Friday moved to unload yet another city asset: Chicago parking meters.

8. Chicago Mayor Daley’s plan to privatize Midway Airport is gaining altitude
Airlines operating at Midway say an agreement is near that would allow the city to seek a private operator for the South Side airport, a deal expected to raise up to $3 billion for Chicago’s underfunded public pension plans and long-term infrastructure needs, reports Chicago Business. Under the federal law that allows Midway to be privatized, five of the seven airlines operating there must approve the deal’s terms before it can be put out for bid. Southwest Airlines Co. and Delta Air Lines Inc. have tentatively approved it, while officials with AirTran Holdings Inc., ATA Airlines Inc., Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp. all say a deal is near. A Continental Airlines Inc. spokeswoman says the "process is still ongoing."

9. $3B debt for roads, transit may cut PA turnpike lease price
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission’s mounting debt will lower the price a private company is willing to pay for a long-term lease of America’s first superhighway, a turnpike legal adviser said, reports the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The turnpike’s projected $3 billion debt "comes right off the top" of the probable lease price, said Alan Wohlstetter, an attorney with Cozen O’Connor, a Philadelphia law firm hired by the turnpike.

10. RI: Prison counseling may go private
Last November Roberta Richmond, assistant director of rehabilitative services at the state prison, met with 33 prison counselors to deliver what she knew would be grim news. Richmond told the counselors, a third of whom have 20 years or more of service, that the Corrections Department was considering giving their jobs to an outside agency to save money. Incredulous, the counselors responded with “shock, disbelief” and an understandable attitude of “Why us?” says Richmond. But three months later, the counselors aren’t much closer to losing their jobs and the “privatization” plan — one of two major departmental strategies for helping the state shrink its looming deficit — is shrouded in uncertainty, prison administrators concede, according to an article in The Providence Journal.

11. Va. sues Texas collection agency over child support payments
The Virginian-Pilot reports that Virginia is suing a private child-support collection agency based in Texas for interfering with the state’s collection efforts. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced the lawsuit on Friday. In a news release, the state officials said the organization Supportkids Inc. sends wage-withholding notices to employers of parents who owe child support payments, and directs the employer to send payments directly to the company’s office in Austin, Texas, rather than to Virginia’s Division of Child Support Enforcement.

12. State officials, competing firms spar over Texas’ specialty license plate business
Privatizing the Texas’ specialty license plate business was supposed to be an easy sell – a speedy way to bring in tens of millions of dollars in new revenue.
Instead, it’s been 1BGMESS, reports the Dallas Morning News.

13. N.C. schools rethink private owners
McClatchy reports that North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board is expected to pull the plug Tuesday on plans to let a developer become the landlord at four schools. Administrators conceded this week that the public-private partnership, which was supposed to save money, would end up costing more. "We deliberated the value of doing this just to show how it would work so we could learn something," Associate Superintendent Guy Chamberlain said. "But in the end, we decided the cost to the taxpayers had to prevail."

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