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Public/Private Partnerships became the rage about 20 years ago with the idea that taxpayer money is not needed, and users will pay. As a retired transportation official, I have spoken against these Public/Private Partnerships because I see them as not in the public's best interest. In reality they are just another tax that gets passes on to the public, but politicians and trans. officials can pass their responsibility for good public infrastructure onto others; this serves the politicians in two ways: First, it steers money toward their contractor/engineering friends. Second, it allows them to put incompetent people into positions of responsibility (hacks) because they don't have to take responsibility for State decisions, they just say the Partnership is responsible for evaluating and deciding that. Before you know it your Dept. of Transportation doesn’t have the experience to make sound decisions anymore because they lost all their experience. To me this is a very bad procurement process.
The person in this post explains it better than I do.
The person in this post explains it better than I do.
- Horizontal Infrastructure
Posted from collaborate.asce.org
Transportation
Construction
Maintenance
Government Funding
Edited 2 y ago
Posted 2 y ago
Responses: 1
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As a former transportation officer, I get exactly what you are saying and I agree! Poor way to go
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I just don’t know ma’am. At least these Public/Private Partnerships give lip service to being frugal with taxpayer’s money. The last 10 years with this Climate Change Crowd, well they don’t even give lip service to containing costs anymore. In the classes I attended when I brought up increased costs taking away from other worthy projects, they just blatantly said: “Don’t worry about costs, we’ll just raise taxes.”. It was definitely time for me to retire, I couldn’t take it anymore. There were just too many of them to fight. I was taught that were are stewards of the people’s money and we need to be careful with it, using it only on tried and true methods. No more being good stewards, they say let's try this, and let's try that, it’s for the best… but it really isn’t. I’m sorry to go on but even retired for so long it still gets to me, I suppose I was taught too good.
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