TTC News Archives-Trans Texas Corridor: "NTTA has always relied on a small number of legal and consulting firms."

Sunday, November 08, 2009

"NTTA has always relied on a small number of legal and consulting firms."

NTTA'S LEGACY FIRMS

11/8/09

The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

NTTA has always relied on a small number of legal and consulting firms to provide manpower for its projects.

HNTB

Founded in 1914, and the developer of the first modern turnpike, HNTB is a giant engineering and architecture firm that serves as general engineering consultant for dozens of toll authorities across the U.S. It has $800 million a year in sales, employs 3,700 workers and has more than 60 offices. It has worked for NTTA since 1953.

RBC Capital Markets

RBC Capital Markets has been NTTA's financial adviser since 1983. It is a subsidiary of Canada's largest company by market share, Royal Bank of Canada.

Wilbur Smith Associates

Since 1962, Wilbur Smith Associates has been NTTA's traffic and revenue engineer, studying population, traffic and economic trends to forecast likely traffic and toll revenue for each NTTA project. NTTA relies on those projections to borrow billions of dollars to build its roads.

Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell

Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell and its predecessor firms have been NTTA's outside general counsel since the agency's founding in 1953. Charles Purnell, a partner in one of the predecessor firms in Dallas, is credited with writing the statute in 1953 that formed the Texas Turnpike Authority, which became the NTTA in 1997.

McCall Parkhurst & Horton

McCall Parkhurst & Horton has been NTTA's bond counsel since 1955. Founded in 1919, the firm has three Texas offices and focuses exclusively on public finance law. It was the first Texas firm to issue an approving opinion for a bond issue in Texas that was accepted by the national financial markets.