On the day after the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority (KABATA) announced that six industry consortiums submitted a statement of qualifications to compete for the project (for KABATA press release click here), the headline story in the Anchorage Daily News focused on the dispute over traffic and revenue estimates between KABATA and UAA’s Scott Goldsmith, the objection of the Government Hill Community Council to Federal Highway Administration approving Right of way money before any financing plan is in place, and KABATA’s plan to downselect to 3 the number of consortiums that will receive $2 M apiece to finalize their bid. For Anchorage Daily News story click here.
The Alaska Dispatch’s story examined questions regarding KABATA’s population and trip estimates and its use of eminent domain.
On September 25, 2011 a story in the Washington Post recapped the status of the controversial project for national readers and unearthed a private 2007 email from then Governor Sarah Palin in which she described the attempt to put further state funds into the project as “nonsensical.” For Post article, click here.
On September 28, the Huffington Post published, The Bridge to Nowhere-Except-Your-Wallet Keeps Chugging Along an op ed by David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute. Boaz argues,
Federal politicians, with lots of advice from lobbyists and back-home politicians and little oversight by actual taxpayers, pass these massive bills that require the people of every state to fund distant projects that they know nothing about and will never use. This may be “Don Young’s Way,” as the Knik Arm project is named in honor of the venerable Alaska congressman who keeps laboring to extract tax dollars from New York and Florida for his local road, but it’s also Congress’s way. This is what happens when you push road and bridge funding from the local area to the state to the federal government. And it leads to $14 trillion in national debt.
