The Mansfieldnewsjournal reports that Josh Mandel had lunch with some small business owners and then visited the Mansfield newspaper after his lunch meeting. It is amazing that he has so much time to do these "campaign stops" instead of protecting our money. Does he just put the state treasury on auto-pilot or is someone else running his office????
Josh Mandel is clearly an empty suit. After a public record request was made, and information was provided, it is apparent that Mandel attended ... at least 50 events related to his Senate campaign (largely fundraising), Josh Mandel found the time to talk with just 8 businesses in Ohio.... (source). How sad. Yet we're paying him with our hard earned tax money and he doesn't even want his job as Ohio Treasurer.
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* Gov. John Kasich wants to sell/lease the Ohio Turnpike with hopes of getting a huge amount of money for the state. However, when examining what has happened in Indiana's scheme to sell/lease their state toll road, you have to wonder if they'll be any interested investors. The Toledo Blade reminded readers that .....Gov. John Kasich revived the idea, initially predicting a 50-year lease could raise as much as $3 billion for Ohio.... An article in the Transportationblog says the following about the firm that took control of the Indiana Toll Road:
....Now, Cintra and the Australian firm Macquarie, with whom it partnered to finance the deal, are in danger of default because the team has nearly drained a $150 million reserve fund required as part of its loan agreements, according to a report last month in Debtwire, a publication owned by the Financial Times......
Businessweek:
Eleven million trucks. That’s how many 18-wheelers needed to rumble across northern Indiana in 2010 for the state’s 157-mile toll road to break even. Unfortunately, only about half that many did and the road came up $209 million short......
....Now five years old, the Indiana deal has yet to turn a profit, or break even. Two overseas companies—Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, a unit of Madrid-based Ferrovial, and Macquarie Infrastructure Partners, an investment fund managed by Macquarie Group (MQG) of Sydney, won the right to run the road with a daring $3.8 billion bid—$1 billion more than the next-highest offer.....
.....The private investors haven’t made out so well. Had the road been profitable, they stood to make millions per year over the life of the 75-year project. As it is, they have not been able to get past the debt they incurred winning the bid. They have met their annual debt payments only by borrowing money and may default before loans mature in 2015, according to disclosure documents from Macquarie Atlas Roads, one of the investors. The project’s 2010 prospectus said that revenue from the highway is “expected to remain insufficient to cover debt service obligations over the medium term.” The document cautions that “any default under the loan documents may lead to lender actions which may include foreclosure of the project assets or bankruptcy.” Even Governor Daniels, who had enthusiastically backed the venture, recently said that the foreign investors had overpaid.....
Do you think Kasich will find any