CROWN POINT, Ind.
(AP) - Authorities in two northwest Indiana counties are scheduled to decide
over the next several weeks on whether to proceed with a proposal to lease
the Indiana Toll Road after the Australian-Spanish consortium that leased it
went bankrupt.
The plan announced
Friday by the Lake and LaPorte county commission presidents calls for the
counties to form the Northern Indiana Toll Road Authority, a nonprofit
public-benefit corporation that would issue billions of dollars in bonds to
buy the Toll Road from its creditors. If the counties are the high bidders,
they are expected to seek approval to issue bonds from the Indiana Finance
Authority.
The highway would
be run by a board of directors, consisting of Lake and LaPorte county
officials, and non-elected professionals in the fields of hospitality,
tourism, transportation, education and health care who would be appointed by
county officials.
The county
commission presidents say that under the plan, the counties would be
entitled to receive annual payments of $5 million to lease the 157-mile
highway and would divide any excess revenues for the next 67 years.
“This is a win-win
for our taxpayers if we can succeed,” Lake County Commission President
Roosevelt Allen, D-Gary, told The Times of Munster.
Taxpayers in the
two counties would not be financially liable if revenues did not live up to
expectations because it would be funded with non-recourse revenue bonds,
county officials said. Non-recourse bonds mean that creditors could not seek
assets from the counties other than those pledged as collateral.
Chicago-based ITR
Concession Co. filed for bankruptcy in Chicago last year, saying it couldn’t
afford the debt payments from the 2006 deal under which its parent company,
the Spanish-Australian consortium Cintra-Macquarie, paid Indiana $3.85
billion for the rights to run the highway and keep the toll revenue.
Other northern
Indiana counties the Toll Road passes through decided against trying to take
part in the proposed deal by Lake and LaPorte counties.
Investment bank
Piper Jaffray & Co., of Minneapolis, estimated last fall the Toll Road could
produce between $38 million and $53 million per year after operating and
maintenance expenses.
Completed bids must
be submitted by March 15.