Colorado toll road has roots in suspect mergings
Northwest Parkway
Has roots in suspect mergings
05/28/2006
By Chuck Plunkett
Denver Post
Copyright 2006
The story of the Northwest Parkway begins in Broomfield, where city officials and investors in the Interlocken office park area wanted to build a fast, direct route to Denver International Airport.
Since 1988, Broomfield officials had been working on the parkway as part of a plan to bolster the Interlocken office park and FlatIron Crossing shopping mall, which were in the works.
The city bought land and built underpasses and ramps for the Interlocken Loop and provided other services. It pledged nearly $53 million in new sales and property taxes to make the improvements and hoped to recover that money in two ways: an immediate $4 million from the Northwest Parkway's bond sale; and the remaining $48 million from the parkway's tolls.
In June 1998, Broomfield, other cities and the Interlocken developers established a nonprofit organization to attempt the Northwest Parkway project. The group used state laws created in the mid-1980s by proponents of the E-470 toll road to become the Northwest Parkway Public Highway Authority.
As a public-private partnership with state-granted governmental powers, the new authority gained two important tools: the ability to condemn land and the ability to sell tax-exempt revenue bonds.
To sell them, the authority hired Vollmer Associates, engineering firm Carter & Burgess and a consultant managed by former E-470 chief financial officer Pamela Bailey-Campbell without competitive bids.
Vollmer was hired without bids because the company had already done projections for E-470 and had computer models for the area readily available, authority officials said.
At the Northwest Parkway, which had its first full year of operation in 2004, Vollmer was primarily responsible for the projections but was aided by Bailey- Campbell and Carter & Burgess, two companies that were already working with the authority when retained by Vollmer as subcontractors on the study.
At the same time the projections were being developed, the authority promised Bailey- Campbell a part-time job as chief financial officer at $350 an hour if the road was built. Carter & Burgess was promised a $5.7 million engineering contract - contingent on the sale of the bonds.
In 1994, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an "interpretive statement" in which the regulator said it expected transparent business relationships and easy-to-understand disclosures in the case of any apparent conflicts of interest in offerings such as official statements.
But despite the SEC's guidance that potential conflicts should be "clear and concise," when the "official statement" was printed, the relationships between the Northwest Parkway consultants could be discerned by only the most careful of readers. A key relationship was never mentioned at all.
For example, the official statement doesn't say in any of its pages that the road's prospective contractor - not the authority - was providing the money for Vollmer's work.
And although Page 60 of the statement explains that the consulting company for which Bailey-Campbell works was a subcontractor to Vollmer, the reference doesn't name her. Nor does Page 60 describe the significance of the consultant's work.On Page 100, the statement names Bailey-Campbell as a principal for the subcontractor - but then it doesn't name Vollmer, instead using the term "Traffic and Revenue Consultant."
Carter & Burgess' dual roles receive similar treatment.
Northwest Parkway head Steve Hogan doesn't dispute that Carter & Burgess and Bailey- Campbell played defining roles in justifying the project. But, he said, the projections were never influenced by the prospect of future work for Bailey-Campbell or Carter & Burgess.
Carter & Burgess vice president Katharine Nees said emphatically that the company did not improperly influence the projections.
"That's not the way it works," Nees said.
Bailey-Campbell said her involvement in the traffic studies consisted of overseeing a colleague who gave Vollmer the socio-economic forecasts in the project area. Those forecasts, which include guesses at future job and population growth in the area served by the road, are considered by experts to be critical to traffic and revenue modeling.
Bailey-Campbell, who now works for Carter & Burgess and as the Northwest Parkway's chief financial officer, says her role was limited and would not have allowed her to influence Vollmer to skew its projections.
Asked whether Vollmer or its consultants were pressured by the parkway's sponsors, or the construction company paying for their study, Bailey-Campbell said: "People ask questions. They say, 'Did you take into consideration this? Have you factored this in?' And they'll ask questions, and they'll want to make sure they are taken into consideration.
"But if somebody just says, 'Gee, I think those numbers are low,"' she said, pausing. "We have this problem all the time, because we have clients who are unhappy with the numbers. But they are what they are."
The socio-economic forecasts were based on one of the most aggressive employment forecasts in the corridor, surpassing even those of the Denver Regional Council of Governments, which is charged with planning for growth.
At The Denver Post's request, DRCOG returned to its 2001 data and calculated that, had it been asked at that time to predict employment for the toll road's corridor, it would have projected about 80,000 jobs in 2004. Bailey-Campbell's colleague predicted there would be 109,654, or 37 percent more.
For 2010, DRCOG would have predicted about 110,000 jobs. The Northwest Parkway had said 190,370, or 73 percent more.
The present-day figures show neither projection was correct, but DRCOG was closer to reality: In 2005, DRCOG found that there were 65,243 jobs in the corridor.
Staff writer Chuck Plunkett can be reached at 303-820-1333 or cplunkett@denverpost.com.
© 2006 The Denver Post:www.denverpost.com
Has roots in suspect mergings
05/28/2006
By Chuck Plunkett
Denver Post
Copyright 2006
The story of the Northwest Parkway begins in Broomfield, where city officials and investors in the Interlocken office park area wanted to build a fast, direct route to Denver International Airport.
Since 1988, Broomfield officials had been working on the parkway as part of a plan to bolster the Interlocken office park and FlatIron Crossing shopping mall, which were in the works.
The city bought land and built underpasses and ramps for the Interlocken Loop and provided other services. It pledged nearly $53 million in new sales and property taxes to make the improvements and hoped to recover that money in two ways: an immediate $4 million from the Northwest Parkway's bond sale; and the remaining $48 million from the parkway's tolls.
In June 1998, Broomfield, other cities and the Interlocken developers established a nonprofit organization to attempt the Northwest Parkway project. The group used state laws created in the mid-1980s by proponents of the E-470 toll road to become the Northwest Parkway Public Highway Authority.
As a public-private partnership with state-granted governmental powers, the new authority gained two important tools: the ability to condemn land and the ability to sell tax-exempt revenue bonds.
To sell them, the authority hired Vollmer Associates, engineering firm Carter & Burgess and a consultant managed by former E-470 chief financial officer Pamela Bailey-Campbell without competitive bids.
Vollmer was hired without bids because the company had already done projections for E-470 and had computer models for the area readily available, authority officials said.
At the Northwest Parkway, which had its first full year of operation in 2004, Vollmer was primarily responsible for the projections but was aided by Bailey- Campbell and Carter & Burgess, two companies that were already working with the authority when retained by Vollmer as subcontractors on the study.
At the same time the projections were being developed, the authority promised Bailey- Campbell a part-time job as chief financial officer at $350 an hour if the road was built. Carter & Burgess was promised a $5.7 million engineering contract - contingent on the sale of the bonds.
In 1994, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an "interpretive statement" in which the regulator said it expected transparent business relationships and easy-to-understand disclosures in the case of any apparent conflicts of interest in offerings such as official statements.
But despite the SEC's guidance that potential conflicts should be "clear and concise," when the "official statement" was printed, the relationships between the Northwest Parkway consultants could be discerned by only the most careful of readers. A key relationship was never mentioned at all.
For example, the official statement doesn't say in any of its pages that the road's prospective contractor - not the authority - was providing the money for Vollmer's work.
And although Page 60 of the statement explains that the consulting company for which Bailey-Campbell works was a subcontractor to Vollmer, the reference doesn't name her. Nor does Page 60 describe the significance of the consultant's work.On Page 100, the statement names Bailey-Campbell as a principal for the subcontractor - but then it doesn't name Vollmer, instead using the term "Traffic and Revenue Consultant."
Carter & Burgess' dual roles receive similar treatment.
Northwest Parkway head Steve Hogan doesn't dispute that Carter & Burgess and Bailey- Campbell played defining roles in justifying the project. But, he said, the projections were never influenced by the prospect of future work for Bailey-Campbell or Carter & Burgess.
Carter & Burgess vice president Katharine Nees said emphatically that the company did not improperly influence the projections.
"That's not the way it works," Nees said.
Bailey-Campbell said her involvement in the traffic studies consisted of overseeing a colleague who gave Vollmer the socio-economic forecasts in the project area. Those forecasts, which include guesses at future job and population growth in the area served by the road, are considered by experts to be critical to traffic and revenue modeling.
Bailey-Campbell, who now works for Carter & Burgess and as the Northwest Parkway's chief financial officer, says her role was limited and would not have allowed her to influence Vollmer to skew its projections.
Asked whether Vollmer or its consultants were pressured by the parkway's sponsors, or the construction company paying for their study, Bailey-Campbell said: "People ask questions. They say, 'Did you take into consideration this? Have you factored this in?' And they'll ask questions, and they'll want to make sure they are taken into consideration.
"But if somebody just says, 'Gee, I think those numbers are low,"' she said, pausing. "We have this problem all the time, because we have clients who are unhappy with the numbers. But they are what they are."
The socio-economic forecasts were based on one of the most aggressive employment forecasts in the corridor, surpassing even those of the Denver Regional Council of Governments, which is charged with planning for growth.
At The Denver Post's request, DRCOG returned to its 2001 data and calculated that, had it been asked at that time to predict employment for the toll road's corridor, it would have projected about 80,000 jobs in 2004. Bailey-Campbell's colleague predicted there would be 109,654, or 37 percent more.
For 2010, DRCOG would have predicted about 110,000 jobs. The Northwest Parkway had said 190,370, or 73 percent more.
The present-day figures show neither projection was correct, but DRCOG was closer to reality: In 2005, DRCOG found that there were 65,243 jobs in the corridor.
Staff writer Chuck Plunkett can be reached at 303-820-1333 or cplunkett@denverpost.com.
© 2006 The Denver Post:
posted by Porkus Maximus Tex: at Sunday, May 28, 2006
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