Headlines
Colleges for profit are growing, with federal help
IL: $50 million parking ticket
OH: County stresses stake in turnpike
NY: Nassau’s sewer plan sounds too good
MN: Minneapolis city council ok’s Vikings stadium plan,

Colleges for profit are growing, with federal help
While state and local governments spend less on higher education, the volume of federally guaranteed loans to students at commercial colleges continues to grow….In Washington, the Obama administration has been trying to write rules that would stop loans going to students at the most exploitative of the schools, ones whose students are most likely to default on the loans and least likely to get jobs if they graduate. The Department of Education is expected to announce within a few weeks which programs at which schools are failing, but that determination will have little immediate impact. The earliest that any school will lose financing is 2014…. All those profits would dry up and vanish were government support to wither away, but so far there is little sign of that. In the 2010-11 academic year, the government guaranteed nearly $24 billion in loans to students at proprietary schools and provided almost $9 billion more in grants. All that money went to the schools.  New York Times

IL: $50 million parking ticket
Chicago Parking Meters, LLC has sent another bill to the city, totaling $22 million, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. To date, the parking meter company has sought reimbursement of almost $50 million for lost revenue due to street closures and disabled parking….Just imagine if the City of Chicago decided to replace the meters and raise the rates on its own! The scariest part of this whole ordeal is that there is still no law on the books protecting taxpayers from getting taken to the cleaner’s again. Certainly, asset privatization has become more unpopular than ever. But the Infrastructure Trust was unpopular too, and we saw that sail right through the City Council. So until there is a law on the books to protect taxpayers from bad deals, Chicago taxpayers should assume that anything can happen. Illinois PIRG

OH: County stresses stake in turnpike
Lorain County has a major stake in the future of the Ohio Turnpike, county commissioners told representatives of the Ohio Department of Transportation and a Texas consulting firm that is studying whether the toll road should be privatized.  The county has six exit ramps off the Turnpike, the most of any county the road runs through, and any change would have a significant impact locally, the commissioners said. Commissioner Ted Kalo said one of his chief concerns is whether leasing the Turnpike to a private company will lead to increased tolls that could force drivers, particularly truckers, off the toll road and onto free highways. That would lead to higher traffic rates on local roads and mean more upkeep will be required to maintain those roads, he said. The Chronicle-Telegram

NY: Nassau’s sewer plan sounds too good
Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano may be on to something with his proposal for a public-private partnership to operate its sewage treatment facilities…As Mangano described the deal on Thursday, ot would be a fabulous deal for the county.In fact, too fabulous, which is why we are skeptical. To hear Mangano describe the plan, United Water would step in and using its efficiencies, immediately be able to operate the system for 30 to 40 percent less than it costs now….But what if you could finance the improvements, pay off all your outstanding debt and even have some left over to pay down the $3 billion debt? And what if you could do all of this at absolutely no risk and not even giving up ownership of your assets (the sewer system)? Woweee, that would be a financial genius…The problem is, why would anyone invest $1 billion, and be limited in the rate of return, not own any of the assets, and if they miss the mark, would have to walk away from their investment?  Indeed, how would the investor even recoup the investment, let alone make profit, when the investor has to pay United Water to actually operate the system (that would mean there would also be two layers of profit).  The Island Now

MN: Minneapolis city council ok’s Vikings stadium plan
The $1 billion public-private plan to build a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings took one of its final steps toward reality Thursday, as a slim majority of the Minneapolis City Council voted in favor of a sales tax shift to help pay for it…With Mayor R.T. Rybak pushing hard for the stadium, opponents on the council appeared resigned to their loss. But they used the meeting as something of a last stand, blasting the project as corporate welfare disproportionately funded by Minneapolis taxpayers and arguing that residents should have had a voice in a citywide referendum.  “To me this is a very sad day for our city,” said Councilwoman Lisa Goodman, who said the stadium’s costs to her constituents outweigh its benefits. Goodman said she was ashamed that fellow Democrats, led by Gov. Mark Dayton and Rybak, took the lead in getting the deal done. INFORUM