February 27 11:45 PM
Here come the tolls...
By Todd Morehead
The South Carolina Dept. of Transportation has public-private partnership (PPP) legislation in place. A Federal Highway Administration report entitled “Overview of States with Significant Transportation Public Private Partnership Authority” makes reference to S.C. code 57-5-1300 (1) 4 which, according to the report, “appears to permit SC DOT to use PPPs to develop these [turnpike] facilities.” And a June 2006 highway finance report on toll roads released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO-06-554) states that S.C. had pursued private investor funding as early as 2004.
On Feb. 23, 2007 Elizabeth Mabry, former executive director of the S.C. DOT, was slated to speak at the 3rd annual PPP USA Summit in Washington, D.C., though she ended up announcing her resignation a few weeks prior to the event. Representatives from Goldman Sachs, Macquarie, Cintra and other large investment firms that already own sections of highway in Indiana and Texas were in attendance at the summit. Mabry, representing South Carolina, was to be a guest speaker for a section called “The Next Generation of PPP States II.”
It has been widely reported that parts of I-95 and possibly parts of I-26 are slated to become toll roads, presumably under state jurisdiction. Once the toll roads are in operation—with PPP legislation in place and S.C. DOT officials being scheduled to appear at PPP summits alongside foreign toll highway investors like Cintra—South Carolinians concerned with state infrastructure should keep a close eye on the development of these toll highways if they want to keep the toll money flowing to state coffers rather than foreign bank accounts.
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