Wall Street Journal frontpages Penn Pike concession

The Wall Street Journal whose reporting of the toll business is generally sparse today (pA1 2008-08-26) frontpaged the proposed $12.8b toll concession of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Reporter Craig Karmin apparently got in to talk to the main champion state governor Ed Rendell who told him that leasing the Turnpike "is a decided underdog."

The governor said that the Turnpike Commission is "the last bastion of political patronage for both parties," adding "Very few in politics want to mess up that arrangement."

Rendell's chief of staff Roy Kientiz is quoted as saying that Rendell got the idea of the concession/lease from Indiana: "The governor said, 'Why don't we consider something like this?'"

Karmin reports that Rendell is meeting legislators one on one to try win them over to support for the concession during the next three weeks before the legislature reconvenes for a short fall session.

He is quoted somewhat as saying: "This is very high on my list of priorities. There's still a decent chance it will pass (the legislature)."

The report has the usual Columbia School baby-journalism of finding a very ordinary person to say something so ordinary you wonder why it's considered worth reporting - in this case a self-employed lady who made the observation that "they are always doing work on it" and that "there are a lot of accidents."

Really.

More serious is the reporter's tendentious line: "the deal is sparking debate about whether America's highways are too much a part of the national fabric to be controlled by anyone but the public."

In what sense does "the public" control the Pennsylvania Turnpike? It is controlled by the board of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, and the public has about as much control over them as it has over the weather.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-08-26