Corzine administration ordered to court to explain why toll roads study being kept secret

The Corzine administration is under a court order to appear before a superior court judge Nov 16 to explain why it won't release an $800k study by Steer Davies Gleave on various scenarios for monetizing or privatizing tollroads in the state. Republican members of the legislature lodged the lawsuit for the release of the document last month.

Alex DeCroce Republican leader in the Assembly said today the Corzine administration is wasting taxpayer money fighting release of what he called his "supersecret monetization report."

He predicted that they will use "every legal trick in the book" to keep the report "locked away" until after the November elections.

Republicans are making opposition to "monetization" the centerpiece of their election campaign this year. With no administration proposal coming out of more than a year of internal discussion and behind the scenes consultant activity opponents have been free to scaremonger and demagogue without supporters being able to respond or make a case for reform.

Corzine seemed to retreat from the idea of a toll concession to monetization - or deep borrowing - by a state agency in the face of public opposition. But a recent opinion survey shows that monetization is just as unpopular - in the absense of any positive advocacy - as a longterm lease concession.

The SDG report is said to estimate the value of several approaches to extracting value from the state's three tollroads - the New Jersey Turnpike, the Garden State Parkway, and the Atlantic City Expressway - plus NJ440 which links the Turnpike and the Parkway.

Steer Davies Gleave is a major international consulting firm based in London.

Other work for the Corzine administration on privatization/monetization is being done by UBS based in Zurich Switzerland.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-10-04