Make the Bondholders Pay the Toll

* Re “O.C. to State: Buy Our Toll Roads,” May 23:

The Orange County Transportation Authority voted to ask the state to purchase the Orange County toll roads at a cost of $3.5 million in order that everyone can drive for free.

These toll roads were built on the promise that the bonds that financed construction would be paid for by future tolls.

If these toll roads are bankrupt, then the public interest requires that we know immediately. The private company toll road books should be audited by the state to determine if any fraud was involved in disbursing funds in building and operating the toll roads. The toll road financial records must be opened to public review.

Toll road bonds were sold to the public. The state should have no obligation to give these bondholders full reimbursement.

If the state purchases these toll roads, the state should pay only fair market value and the bondholders should absorb any loss. These bondholders can sue the security firms that sold these bonds and the construction firms that built these toll roads for any loss they incurred.

If the state does purchase these toll roads with gas tax money, then such gas tax money should come from Orange County and Orange County cities.

Because the dollar amount would probably use all their gas tax money for a number of years, the state gas tax fund could be reimbursed over a 20-year period. No gas tax money that normally goes to Los Angeles County or other adjacent counties should be diverted to purchase failed Orange County toll roads.

Recently certain freeway public safety construction projects were delayed because of contractual problems with the private owners of the 91 Express Lanes toll road.

If public safety on publicly owned freeways becomes a serious issue, then the state should build these public safety projects and have the courts settle on the dollar amount of any damages to the privately owned toll roads.

The state should not permit itself to be forced into a position of purchasing the toll roads above market value in order to avoid a lawsuit.

LARRY BURKS

San Pedro

* Since the backers of the toll roads were trumpeting the merits of the free market system back when they took all that public land for their private use, and since the marketplace has clearly decided that they were woefully ignorant, then why not let the market decide their fate?

The state should do what any other rational business would in this situation: Let the toll road owners go belly up (giving these entrepreneurs a valuable education in the process) and buy the toll roads for a penny on the dollar once they declare bankruptcy.

It will save taxpayers a bundle, allow more money to be used for social spending, give us a great deal on some passably useful roads and, most important, allow the magic of the marketplace to do its wonders.

Why is it that proponents of privatizing only want the rewards and not the risks?

JEFFREY R. ESTES

Long Beach