LWVCT CONVENTION 2011 NOW HISTORY -
BUT PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP IDEA IS
GROWING IN CT
The Call to
Convention 2011 here
WATCH
NOW - Best seen using Internet
Explorer
http://www.lwvweston.org/LWVCT5-21-11Gelinas.wmv
(150MB, 56 mins 43 secs)
Nicole Gelinas explained the meaning
of "P.P.P." or
public-private partnership...
PROS AND CONS
OF PRIVATIZATION
Address by Nicole Gelinas to the 2011 LWVCT Convention
Plus
presentation of LWVCT Awards to Local Leagues, and individuals of more
than 50-year membership
PICTURE STORY OF LWVCT CONVENTION 2011
The League of Women Voters of Connecticut, Inc. Convention 2011 took
place Saturday, May 21, 2011 at the Graduate Club, New Haven, CT.
After a morning Plenary Session, luncheon and our keynote
speaker
came next...
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS
LWVCT President Cheryl Dunson
introduced our distinguished keynote
speaker, Ms.
Gelinas, and the topic.
NEW HAVEN
AVIANS (not visible in picture) offered comments
After an excellent lunch, the
delegates and visitors listened
intently to privatization report. The birds may have been saying
it was a less expensive
way to do local projects - "cheap"
PPP's BEGAN ACROSS THE POND
Ms. Gelinas defined PPP for the
League. She has studied the PPP
model over the last 10 years or so.
LWV QUESTIONS & MS. GELINAS'
ANSWERS FOLLOWED
Then it was back to business and the
AFTERNOON PLENARY SESSION (see
below).
Election of Officers (who had been nominated in the morning Plenary
Session) followed, plus other parts of the agenda related to program,
and
then LWVCT was delighted to entertain 2nd Vice President of the League
of Women Voters of the United States and our Liaison, Judy Davis.
Ms. Davis answered four questions that had been submitted to her prior
to Convention by the LWVCT Board. In addition, further matters
were brought up by League members present.
Q&A
LWVUS
VP Judy
Davis answers questions.
LWVUS in the
news...
Voter Group Flexes Muscle in Ads Aimed at Senators
NYTIMES
By CARL HULSE
May 25,
2011
WASHINGTON — The League of Women Voters is typically thought of as an
earnest, civic-minded organization best known for hosting sober
candidate debates and distributing studious voter guides to keep the
citizenry informed.
But two senators facing elections discovered this month that the group
had decided to take its informational role to an entirely new level.
Senators Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, and Scott P. Brown,
Republican of Massachusetts, found themselves on the receiving end of a
hard-hitting, big-money television campaign taking them to task for
votes to limit the regulatory power of the Environmental Protection
Agency.
The league-sponsored ads showed a new willingness by the nearly
century-old group to flex political muscle. At the same time, the sharp
tone of the commercials set off internal dissension, got league
officials called to the Capitol for a dressing-down from Democrats, and
had politicians looking at the group in a whole new light.
“I was shocked,” said Ms. McCaskill, who like Mr. Brown was accused of
favoring polluters over people in an ad featuring an asthmatic little
girl struggling to breathe. “My mom was the president of the League of
Women Voters in Lebanon, Missouri, when I was a little girl. To me,
they have always been about civic engagement and debates.”
League officials and their allies say the ads were a natural outgrowth
of the group’s historic advocacy role on issues like clean air, which
the league has championed for decades. Leaders of the organization said
the campaign was reminiscent of its origins, when founding members
spoke out for voting rights.
“The women who fought for suffrage and won were not shrinking violets,”
said Judy Duffy, a Minnesotan who is chairwoman of the national
league’s advocacy committee.
She acknowledged, though, that the group had decided to rev up its
message machine after deciding that its more conventional approaches of
letter-writing and visits to Capitol Hill were not working when it came
to clean air issues.
She said league leaders were motivated by what they perceived as a
shift from treating air pollution as a health threat to one based more
on the economic impact of new rules.
“We had a variety of our normal kinds of advocacy but the message
wasn’t being delivered,” she said. “We took advantage of the
opportunity to kind of step out of our box.”
That step was a big one, resulting in the league’s acting at the end of
April to buy two weeks of ads for approximately $1.5 million to take on
two high-profile senators facing the voters next year, an approach
calculated to grab attention. And it did.
Mr. Brown and his allies answered back to what they saw as an ambush,
assembling a video that he posted on a campaign site. It accused the
league of serving as a front for liberal special interests and sought
to undermine the group’s credibility.
“Remember when the League of Women Voters used to be a nonpartisan
group?” it asked. “Now they have gone to the gutter with their negative
ads against Scott Brown.”
Eric Fehrnstrom, a political adviser to Mr. Brown, said the league had
squandered its hard-earned reputation for unbiased and nonpartisan
voter education in order to go after Mr. Brown.
“It fell to us to correct the record about their misleading attack,” he
said.
Senate Democrats were not happy, either, with the campaign against Ms.
McCaskill, who faces a difficult re-election campaign next year.
Representatives of the league and other environmental organizations
that participate in a coalition in support of the Clean Air Act were
summoned to the office of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority
leader, to be told that the attack on Ms. McCaskill was not helpful.
Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters and an
ally of the league, said the reaction was so vehement because the
advertising sponsored by the league, with its long-standing reputation,
packed more of a punch than would a campaign sponsored by a
conventional environmental group.
“They are a great messenger,” he said.
Both parties are quick to point out that the league, which supports
transparency in political fund-raising, has not been willing to reveal
the source of the money for the ad campaign.
“I don’t know how a good-government organization can say with a
straight face that they are not part of the problem if they are
unwilling to reveal who is paying for the ad,” Ms. McCaskill said.
League officials said they would meet disclosure requirements in their
annual report next year.
One person familiar with the ads said the money was a result of
fund-raising efforts and did not have a single source.
Ms. McCaskill and others also suggested that the advertising initiative
could limit participation by political candidates in league activities
like debates.
There were internal repercussions as well. A chapter president in
Massachusetts resigned her post, and other members in the two states
have raised strong objections to the ads, which have ended their run.
Ms. Duffy called the turmoil within the group regrettable. But she said
she was hearing from many members — including mothers and grandmothers
of asthmatic children — who were “delighted that we are stepping out of
our normal advocacy and making a strong statement.”
“We thought this was an opportunity to be heard above the din,” she
said.
Pre-Convention...
Nicole Gelinas
League convention features Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow
Press release by Connecticut League of Women Voters
The Connecticut League of Women Voters’ 2011 State Convention, on
Saturday, May 21, 2011 at The Graduate Club in New Haven, features
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Nicole Gelinas, as its guest speaker.
Every 2 years delegates from local Leagues in Connecticut convene for
workshops, networking, and election of state board members. This year,
Ms. Gelinas will present the convention with a keynote address on the
pros and cons of privatization.
Ms. Gelinas is an accomplished author and a contributing editor of City
Journal, described as the nation’s premier urban policy magazine. She
writes on urban economics and finance, municipal and corporate finance,
and business issues. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)
charterholder and a member of the New York Society of Securities
Analysts. Her most recent book, After the Fall: Saving Capitalism from
Wall Street — and Washington was published in November 2009.
Commentators have called it a “standout” and “an instant classic” — one
of the best analyses of the country’s 2008 financial meltdown.
Gelinas has published analysis and opinion pieces in the op-ed pages of
the country’s leading publications, such as the New York Times, Wall
Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Boston Herald.
For more information, contact the League of Women Voters at
203/288-7996 or online at www.lwvct.org.
CONVENTION
2011
Saturday,
May 21st, 2011
8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
New Haven Graduate Club
155 Elm Street, New Haven, CT 06511
8:00-8:30: REGISTRATION and continental breakfast; Board members
available for questions
8:30 -10:45 Morning PLENARY SESSION, Presiding: Cheryl Dunson,
President, LWVCT
• Announcements/Welcome
• Adoption of Rules
• Credentials Report
• Minutes of 2009 Convention
• President’s Report
• Report of Nominating Committee (Presentation of
Slate)
• Presentation of Proposed Bylaws Changes: questions
for clarification only
• Presentation of CT Budget: questions for
clarification only
• PI Team Report
• Presentation of Proposed Program: questions for
clarification only
10:45-11:45 LOCAL LEAGUE NETWORKING SESSION
LUNCHEON 12:00 noon-2:00 p.m.
12:30 -1:15: Speaker: Nicole Gelinas, of the Manhattan Institute, on
privatization.
1:15-1:30 Recognition of 50-year members
1:30-2:00 p.m. Awards
2:00-4:00 Afternoon PLENARY SESSION.
• Bylaws debate and adoption
• Budget debate and adoption
• Program debate and adoption
• Election of Officers and Board
• News From National: Report by LWVUS Liaison Judy
Davis
• President’s Address/Remarks
• Directions to the Board
Please return one copy for each registrant to LWVCT, 1890 Dixwell
Avenue, suite 203, Hamden, CT 06514-3183. Checks should be made
out to “LWVCT, Inc.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yes! I’d like to attend Convention 2011:
Name__________________________________
League______________________________
E-Mail__________________________________
Amount Enclosed ($45 for first delegate, $42 each additional attendee)
$_____________
□ No one from my League can come, but we’ll permit a member in good
standing of another League to represent us.
Click here to
watch a C-SPAN2 presentation by our speaker (from 2009)
Catch our speaker's
regular columns at the New York POST online
Budget weirdness
New York
POST
By NICOLE
GELINAS
Last Updated:
4:11 AM, May 9, 2011
Posted: 10:49
PM, May 8, 2011
Last Friday,
Mayor Bloomberg updated his budget proposal for the fiscal
year that starts in July: The city will spend some $49.7 billion of its
own money. With state and federal cash, the total is $68.9 billion. The
city's part is 11 percent more than this year -- in part because the
mayor is just too nice to stick up for taxpayers against Gotham's
public-workers' unions.
The immediate
problem is that taxes and other revenues will net the
city just $46.5 billion next year -- $3.2 billion less than the $49.7
billion the mayor means to spend. That's a huge gap -- nearly 6.9
percent.
More worrisome,
it's our fourth straight year of big budget gaps. The
rafts keeping city government afloat since 2009 are Wall Street
bailouts, which have pushed up bank profits, plus the Obama stimulus.
But that
windfall is gone. Though New York has weathered the recession
better than the rest of the country, a healthy economy won't pay for
our high spending. We'd need a permanent bubble for that.
So we've got to
do something to cut costs. That means tackling soaring
expenses like Medicaid and debt costs -- and also pensions and other
worker and retiree benefits (mainly health). Next year, pensions and
worker benefits will eat up 35 percent of city revenues -- $16.4
billion.
The mayor is
right to say that we can't afford this stuff. He deserve
credit, too, for being upfront about Gotham's massive pension burden,
paying the $8.4 billion contribution to the fund this year, for
example, rather than weasel his way out of it, as state and local
governments from New Jersey to Illinois have done.
He's right to
oppose the City Council proposal to raid a $2 billion
"surplus" -- money that's needed to pay for future health benefits --
to give unions more cash now.
The mayor is
right, too, to take a page from MTA chief Jay Walder's
playbook, directing his deputies to save money by slashing real estate,
merging help desks and squeezing outside contractors for some savings.
But Bloomberg is going about "fixing" the big-ticket problems strangely.
Start with his
claim that the problem isn't that the city spends too
much, but that Washington and Albany spend too little. He made the
point strongly Friday, pointing to "deep disinvestment in New York City
by the state and federal governments."
When the mayor
took office, the feds paid 15 percent of our budget;
today it's 10 percent. And the state's down from 21 percent to 17
percent. If they'd kept up, "then spending . . . would cost local
taxpayers $6.1 billion less" next year, the mayor noted.
Sorry: They're
spending less as a share simply because the city has
vastly increased its outlays. Why should state and federal taxpayers go
along for the ride?
Bloomberg has
upped education spending, for example, by 108 percent,
more than three times the inflation rate (and that's before adding in
the growth in teacher-pension costs). Nor did the feds make us spend so
much on public-employee benefits -- and up until 2008, the mayor freely
gave out raises without demanding big changes to these benefits in
return.
As for the
state, the mayor says that if he doesn't get more from
Albany, he'll lay off 4,100 teachers. But where is Gov. Cuomo supposed
to get the money? Instead of throwing around threats, the city and
state should be working to do more with less in education.
Bloomberg is
also implicitly "threatening" the teachers union -- saying
that if he doesn't get union cooperation on cost-cutting, he'll go
ahead with the layoffs. Sorry, the union shouldn't get to decide what
services the taxpayers will get for their money -- that's the mayor's
job, along with controlling costs to pay for it.
The mayor's on
slightly firmer ground complaining about the state on
pensions -- since the governor and Legislature do set pension rules for
public workers, regularly adding to Gotham's pension costs.
Yet the mayor's
"answer" here is weird, too. He wants Albany to give
him the right to bargain with unions over pensions for future workers.
As he put it Friday: "As [some] states try to walk away from their
unions, not have unions, we want to negotiate more with our unions."
Come on: He's
always had the right to bargain wages and health care for
today's workers -- and that hasn't done the taxpayers any more good.
Better to ask Albany to remove health benefits from the
collective-bargaining process, so that the city can ask workers to pay
premiums as it sees fit to control costs. That's what Massachusetts is
doing, and it would save the city a good $500 million, enough to keep
the teachers.
The mayor's
strategy adds up to one thing: twisting himself in knots to
acknowledge the city's untenable fiscal situation while avoiding a
head-on fight with labor. But sometimes peace -- and cognitive
dissonance -- is unaffordable.
LWVCT CONVENTION 2007
University of New Haven, Bartels Hall
June 16, 2007
VIDEO of Convention 2007, complete version available: please
e-mail LWV of Weston
for more information.
TO WATCH THE ONE-HOUR HIGHLIGHTS VERSION ON YOUR COMPUTER, IN WINDOWS
MEDIA PLAYER FORMAT, PLEASE CLICK APPROPRIATE LINK BELOW:
For CABLE/DSL connection (137mB):
http://www.aboutweston.com/LWVCT6-16-07AbridgedCableVersion.wmv
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Mayor Emanuel Refuses to Pay $14
Million Meter Parking Bill
Yahoo!
By Rachel Bogart
May 4, 2012
According to WLS, Chicago is disputing a $14 million bill from the
company running its parking meters. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has actively
spoken against the charges being billed by Chicago Parking Meters,
saying the bills are inaccurate and the company failed to properly
document the charges and the city will not be paying. The company has
said the bill is for parking spaces that the city took out of service.
* The parking meter company is saying it lost revenue when the city
took meters of out service in 2011 during city-sponsored events and
festivals, street repairs and other activities, according to the
Chicago Sun-Times.
* Chicago's deal with Chicago Parking Meters stems from an agreement in
2008 under former Mayor Richard Daley in which the city's 36,000 meters
were privatized and the company was given the right to all meter
revenues until 2084.
* NBC Chicago reported this is the second time Mayor Emanuel has
disputed charges to the city by the meter company. The city is fighting
$13.5 million in charges that were billed because of free parking given
to handicap individuals.
* Chicago Parking Meters raked in over $80 million from the city's
parking meters last year and the company exceeded the financial revenue
projections initially made by experts.
* CBS Local noted the mayor also criticized the original 2008 deal,
stating it was a bad idea and it is currently being reviewed.
* Alderman Pat Dowell is also agreeing with Mayor Emanuel and
supporting a renegotiation of the initial deal, a deal in which Chicago
was paid about $1.2 billion for the 99-year lease of the meters.
* Since the agreement was formed, parking meter rates across the city
have seen a major increase and more increases are slated over the next
five years. By next year, it will cost drivers $6.50 an hour to park in
the Loop on all days of the week with the company ending all free
Sunday and holiday parking.
$7
Billion Public-Private Plan in Chicago Aims to Fix Transit, Schools and
Parks
By JOHN
SCHWARTZ, NYTIMES
March 29, 2012
Chicago is
embarking on a $7 billion plan to transform the city’s infrastructure
from the skies above to the pipes underground.
Mayor Rahm
Emanuel is planning to announce the initiative Thursday. It
includes projects to expand the city’s largest airport and improve its
streets, water system, schools, community colleges, parks and commuter
rail network. The city estimates that these initiatives will create
30,000 jobs over the next three years.
At a time when
the nation is only beginning to pull itself painfully
and delicately out of a deep recession, and when cities and states are
cutting essential services and wondering how to keep the courthouses
open and the lights on, an infrastructure proposal for a single city
with an estimated cost in the billions — with a “b” — is audacious. Mr.
Emanuel, in an interview, suggested that nothing less than this
“integrated, comprehensive approach” will do for what he calls
“building a new Chicago.”
With the plan,
Chicago is taking a leading role among cities and states
struggling to keep their infrastructure from crumbling further but
frustrated with legislative gridlock in Washington, said Robert
Puentes, director of the metropolitan infrastructure initiative at the
Brookings Institution.
“There is
tremendous interest in doing something different — people
aren’t waiting for the federal government to raise the gasoline tax or
pass the carbon tax and have money raining down,” he said. He cited
successful campaigns in “can-do states” that include Colorado,
Washington, Arizona and Virginia to finance economic development
projects with public-private partnerships, and Los Angeles’ vote in
support of a major transportation referendum in 2008.
Mr. Emanuel,
who served in the White House in two administrations and
as a member of Congress, said “I will not tie this city’s future to the
dysfunction in Washington and Springfield.”
In the speech,
to be delivered at the Chicagoland Laborers’ Training
and Apprentice Center, Mr. Emanuel will describe the financing for the
sprawling plan. Some of it will come from the newly created Chicago
Infrastructure Trust, an initiative announced this month by Mayor
Emanuel and former President Bill Clinton, who has long had an interest
in infrastructure and energy efficiency. The fund, a nonprofit
corporation, pools outside investment and applies it to a wide range of
possible projects.
Other funds
will come from cost cutting, some from the savings in
energy and water use from retrofitting buildings, and some from user
fees, but “none of these funds will come from an increase in property
or sales taxes,” according to the speech. A copy was provided to The
New York Times through the mayor’s office. Depending on the project,
some of the investment would be paid back through interest on loans,
others through profit sharing.
Still, economic
development efforts in the past have tended to
disappoint, Mr. Puentes noted, because they tended to pay businesses to
relocate or threw money into projects like stadiums. Some
public-private partnership projects have been criticized as giveaways
to the private businesses that take them over — including two prominent
cases in Chicago itself, the privatized Chicago Skyway and the city’s
parking meter system, which obligate the city to leases that span
generations. Mr. Emanuel says that the city has learned an important
lesson, and that “I am not leasing anything,” or selling off the city’s
assets, he said in an interview. “I’m using private capital to improve
a public entity that stays public.”
The
investments, by any measure, are enormous, and they are intended to
tackle enormous problems for this aging city. “You can’t have a
21st-century economy on a 20th-century foundation without holding
yourself back,” Mr. Emanuel said. The projects include $1 billion for
the Chicago Transit Authority to renovate more than 100 stations and
eliminate “slow zones” that cost riders an estimated 11,000 hours of
delays every day. O’Hare International Airport will receive $1.4
billion over the next three years to expand capacity.
Underground,
the city will take on the challenge of fixing its water
system, which suffered 3,800 leaks last year. That means replacing 900
miles of pipe that is more than 100 years old and replacing or relining
750 miles of sewer lines, among other projects estimated at $1.4
billion. Projects would be coordinated so that a street dug up to
repair pipes could get broadband cables and other work done at the same
time so that the streets would not be resurfaced only to be dug up
again soon after.
Mr. Emanuel is
also planning to spend nearly $300 million to buy 180
acres of new parkland and to build playgrounds, basketball courts and
sports fields, as well as nature trails and bike and running paths.
Jorge Ramirez,
the president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said
he applauds the plan as an official concerned with jobs, but also as an
investor in the trust through union pension funds. Instead of investing
pension funds outside the city, “you bring it back here,” creating jobs
locally and getting a good rate of return. “Smart,” he said.
Some suggest
that the initiative will have to prove itself to overcome
the skepticism that comes naturally to longtime observers of the
Chicago political scene. “It’s totally within reason for Chicagoans to
be skeptical,” said Celeste Meiffren, field director for Illinois PIRG,
an advocacy organization. “That being said, it does seem that a lot of
these projects are pretty worthwhile. If the mayor provides a lot of
information to us as residents and taxpayers, gives us an opportunity
to weigh in on these projects and involves our aldermen too — and makes
sure we receive a fair value — it’ll address a lot of the concerns we
have here.”
In his speech,
Mr. Emanuel evokes the Great Fire of 1871, which left
100,000 people homeless, and which led to what he calls the city’s
“second birth”: $50 million in new buildings completed a year after the
fire and a building boom that put the city back on the map and saw it
host a Republican National Convention just nine years later.
“Chicago’s
identity was not forged by the Great Fire,” he said, “but by
the great fortitude of its people in its aftermath.” Rebuilding now, he
suggested in an interview, is just as important: “The decisions we make
in the next two or three years determine what Chicago will look like in
the next 20 or 30 years.”
And not just
Chicago, said Mr. Puentes of Brookings. If the program is
successful, it will be imitated, he said; “This is not just a Chicago
story.”
Governor wins limited approval to
expand public-private partnerships
Keith M. Phaneuf, CT MIRROR
October 27, 2011
The consensus jobs bill signed into law Thursday gives the
administration of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy the ability he sought to expand
public-private partnerships on some types of state construction
projects, a provision state employee unions fought to eliminate.
As a compromise, the final bill includes labor protections that unions
sought in the measure enacted in special session Wednesday, then signed
a day later with great fanfare. These include prevailing wage
guarantees and oversight by legislative panels and the State
Contracting Standards Board.
With varying degrees of enthusiasm, the governor and unions professed
Thursday to be pleased with the public-private partnership language,
which officials say is necessary in an era of diminishing federal
dollars to leverage private capital.
Malloy said the modified language both addressed concerns of labor and
leaves the state positioned to launch important capital projects.
"Quite frankly we were looking for ways to capture the power of the
free market, the investing market," he said after signing the bill.
The legislation authorizes the executive branch, including quasi-public
agencies, to enter into agreement with private entities to "finance,
design, construct, develop, operate or maintain" certain facilities.
A private company or group of companies might be retained to perform
some, or several of these functions. This raised red flags with unions,
who noted that, depending on the type of project, state employees might
perform design, construction, inspection or operation roles.
The types of projects that can follow the public-private-partnership
model, commonly referred to as P-3, include: educational, health, early
child care and housing facilities; transportation systems, ports and
other transit-oriented developments; and any other facility specially
designated by the legislature.
The statute permits the governor to approve up to five public-private
partnerships between now and Jan. 1, 2015.
But the legislature also stipulated that any such partnerships are
subject to review by their Appropriations and Finance, Revenue and
Bonding committees, as well as by the contracting standards board, and
these partnerships must demonstrate new job growth.
Administration officials have said the P-3 approach would complement
ongoing efforts to expand state bonding for capital construction
projects, boosting a hard-hit industry.
State agencies overseeing capital projects typically coordinate design,
construction and inspection services separately, often relying on a
variety of companies to perform those roles. They also, depending on
the project, may employ state engineers, other designers and inspectors.
Under the P-3 concept, the administration would have more flexibility
to deal with one private entity, such as a construction company that
would either provide its own design and inspection services, or
coordinate with other businesses to provide them.
Malloy said these partnerships are well-suited for financed initiatives
that are repaid with revenues from that project. For example, if
Connecticut wished to borrow funds to construct a new parking garage,
it could hire a company or companies to design, construct and operate
the garage -- all under one contract. The company would then provide
payments to cover the debt service with profits from the garage
receipts.
But labor unions countered that unless government oversight of all
aspects of a public project is carefully maintained, they typically
ended in botched work and cost-overruns. Such partnerships don't always
guarantee fair wages, they said.
Labor was circumspect in discussing P-3, commenting only be email.
"We have argued for years that state government needs to be part of the
solution to the sagging economy by helping to spur economic growth and
rebuilding the critical public structures upon which our economy
depends," wrote Larry Dorman, a spokesman for a coalition of
state-employee labor unions.
"By establishing legislative oversight and ensuring the participation
of the state contracting standards board -- both of which are critical
to the success not just of public-private partnerships, but of the
broader effort to create good middle class jobs -- this legislation is
an opportunity to do just that," he wrote.
Senate President Pro Tem Donald E Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, said
legislators worked with the governor to recognize labor's concerns
while also acknowledging that these partnerships are a good way to
leverage more private investments in job-creating capital projects.
"The language did narrow as the negotiations went on," he said. "But we
also have to get ready for reductions in federal aid. We want to be
ahead of the curve and that means looking at innovative partnerships
that bring private investments that may be critical to some government
services in the future.
Sen. Edith G. Prague, D-Columbia, co-chairwoman of the Labor and Public
Employees Committee, said unions "had very valid concerns" about the
need to preserve state oversight of such partnerships, adding she
expects this issue to continue to be studied closely by the General
Assembly in the near future.
"We do need to protect our investments," Prague said. "I will be
watching these partnerships very closely."