Highways for Sale! Highways for Sale!

Governor Deval Patrick is mulling over an idea that would lease bridges and roads to corporations. Casey Ross at the Herald has the details:

If approved, a deal to privatize could mean leasing the Massachusetts Turnpike, Tobin Bridge or Big Dig tunnels to for-profit companies that would pay billions of dollars for the right to collect tolls from motorists for their use. Under such arrangements, the company leasing the road or bridge is responsible for its operation and maintenance.

As your circuits slowly fry over the possibilities of such a proposal, consider this: Imagine the Big Dig brought to you by a generic conglomerate. If the Big Dig flattens another driver or springs more leaks, then will the generic conglomerate be culpable? Did Bechtel do such a great job with the Big Dig?

Aside from potential toll hikes and the impact to labor unions, the state can barely give proper oversight to the roadways. How can it expect to oversee the behavior of corporations when something needs to get done? And, if a corporation admits that they can't get it done and forks over the money to state employees to make a repair or repave a road, then that means the state is getting paid by … a corporation, which means the state answers to the corporation, not the voters.

Well, the guv'mint doesn't always answer to the voters, but at least the current system allows them to pretend that they do! The corporate name of the game is profit. The guv'mint name of the game is getting re-elected. Which game would you rather play?

As for Patrick, he and his team needs to work on avoiding stories that put his name in the same sentence as the word "leasing." Now we're getting flashbacks of "Caddygate."

Can Governor Patrick see the warning signs? Image courtesy of Flickr user Ckirkman, via Flickr