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Better
Roads
Getting
the Job Done Right
By Kirk Landers, Editor Emeritus
Some
people just know how to sell.
In
mid-December, Ohio governor John R.
Kasich and the leaders of Ohio’s Department of Transportation and
Turnpike
Authority announced that the state would raise $3 billion for roads
without
leasing the Ohio Turnpike to a private vendor and without laying off
Turnpike
employees.
Hailed
as the Ohio Jobs and
Transportation Plan, the new initiative called for raising $1.5 billion
through
bonds issued by the Turnpike Commission and backed by future toll
revenues,
then raising another $1.5 billion or so via matching local and federal
funds.
The $3 billion (or so) would be used to rebuild the Turnpike and fund
construction projects on other major highways.
As
news releases go, it was more
interesting than most because Governor Kasich, ODOT Director Jerry Wray
and
Ohio Turnpike Director Rick Hodges called it a “first of its kind”
plan, and it
stood in stark contrast to major announcements in recent years
involving states
like Indiana and Illinois leasing state-constructed infrastructure to
private
firms to raise cash.
It
was interesting, but it wasn’t the
kind of thing you would write a column about except maybe in a very
slow news
month. It’s what came next that put it to the top of my list.
In
the hours following the first
release came a steady stream of short announcements expressing
enthusiasm for
the plan. Six mayors endorsed the plan, including the mayor of
Cleveland. The
Ohio Operating Engineers Local 18 thanked Kasich for the plan. So did
the Ohio
Contractors Association. So did the Ohio Trucking Association and the
American
Trucking Associations, and the County Engineers Association, and a long
list of
state representatives and senators and county commissioners and a
number of
business groups, including the Dayton Chamber of Commerce and the
president of
the Greater Cleveland Partnership.
The
message was simple and dramatic:
Kasich and his highway managers had taken partisan politics out of the
process
by including a full spectrum of stakeholders in the process, and by
somehow
finding enough common ground to announce a high stakes financial
proposition
with a tidal wave of bipartisan support.
Kasich,
if you didn’t know, is a Republican.
The old fashioned upper Midwest kind — fiscally conservative, socially
aware,
politically pragmatic, and willing to do what’s right even when it
isn’t
politically expedient. You don’t have to bother checking the political
affiliations of all the endorsers to know there were plenty of
Democrats and
Republicans who supported this plan.
They
should. It will stimulate
construction and jobs on a great, if not grand, scale in northern Ohio,
and it
will invest in critical infrastructure at a time when competitive
pressure on
contractors promises to keep bids low. It also locks in favorable toll
rates
for years to come. And it focuses the bond revenues on roads.
The
final brilliant stroke of this
initiative was announcing it with two dozen or more endorsements by
civic and
business leaders throughout the state representing a full continuum of
political affiliations. It was a strong message to the press and to
other
politicians that this is a plan with support that runs long and deep in
the
state of Ohio.
Well
done, Governor Kasich. Well done,
Ohio!
Read
this and other articles at Better
Roads
http://www.betterroads.com/getting-the-job-done-right/
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