P3s Challenged Again in Texas
In an article written for the Examiner, a transportation policy writer laid claim to the notion of a trans-Texas corridor and other private partnerships create great risk.
The activity of mixing private participation in the public process of pure public uses always creates a risk. Yet, there may be a gain for the community. This activity may be allowed, totally depending on the State’s Constitutional delegation.
When it comes to infrastructure projects like roads and public buildings, it involves eminent domain that forcibly condemns private property in the name of a ‘public use.’ With P3s, that land, including any amount of adjacent property a developer claims it needs to re-coup its investment, is handed to a private developer for private gain.
So in the case of the City of Bee Cave, Texas, the developer built its city hall building, but gained hundreds of acres of adjacent private property under the guise of a ‘public use’ that they turned into a massive shopping mall for private profits. That’s a deplorable abuse of property rights.
