What's New

August 14th, 2006  Columbus, Ohio - Mahoning Valley leaders this morning kicked off a week of events with local officials along the Ohio Turnpike focused on how Ken Blackwell's scheme to privatize the highway will negatively impact local communities, Ohio businesses and commuters.

"Ken Blackwell's gimmicks aren't going to solve Ohio's problems," said State Representative John Boccieri of New Middletown. "In contrast to Ted Strickland's plan to Turnaround Ohio, Mr. Blackwell has put forward ill-conceived schemes like Turnpike privatization which will lead to foreign ownership and higher tolls."

An examination of toll road privatization experiments in neighboring states yields one undeniable fact: when highways are privatized, tolls go up.

In Illinois, tolls have already been raised 50 cents within a year after auctioning off its Chicago Skyway and the foreign company that runs it has already said that tolls will double in the next 10 years.

When tolls were increased in past years, traffic moved off the Turnpike and onto local roads, causing traffic congestion, safety concerns and added maintenance costs.

"Mr. Blackwell claims that privatization will reap billions of dollars, but his pie-in-the-sky numbers don't include the necessary cost of rebuilding the roadway twice over the span of a 99-year lease, and offers no evidence that the state will retain oversight and control of its vital infrastructure," said Strickland for Governor spokesman Keith Dailey."

The privatization scheme is just one of several gimmicks that Blackwell has proposed in the absence of serious, substantive proposals to turnaround Ohio.