One last bad decision

By Staff Report | Suffolk News-Herald

Published Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Southeastern Public Service Authority is set for a large and much-needed infusion of cash following a vote by the board of directors on Tuesday to accept a proposed deal with Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. to trade the regional waste authority’s Portsmouth waste-to-energy plant for $150 million in cash.

Surely the news of the deal gives the Authority’s eight member communities reason to breathe a sigh of relief. Mired in more than $240 million worth of debt created largely by decades’ worth of fiscal and political mismanagement, SPSA had recently raised its fees for trash disposal at the regional landfill to levels that are among the highest in the nation. And, without a lifeline from either the state or from private industry, those already high fees were expected to climb into the stratosphere in the next couple of years.

With their backs against the wall, the regional organization’s directors — politicians from city councils and boards of supervisors across the Hampton Roads region — likely felt they had no choice but to accept some sort of a bailout deal. Citing a private consultant’s recommendation, on Tuesday they chose to take the offer for only SPSA’s most valuable asset, rebuffing two offers to buy the organization lock, stock and barrel.

The decision is not without merit. The waste authority’s financial troubles certainly put it in a position where its ability to negotiate a sweetheart deal — or even to walk away from a table piled high with cash — is severely limited. And with the prospect of $300-per-ton tipping fees on the near horizon, the Authority’s politician board members have every reason to want to go back to their communities with a win under their belts.

And that fact points to the primary reason for the coming change in the board’s composition — the move to private individuals with experience in business and industry, nominated by the governing bodies of each participating locality, which takes place Jan. 1. The new board, at least theoretically, will not be subject to the same political restraints that so often have informed the poor fiscal decisions of other SPSA directors. Charged only with doing the right thing for SPSA, the new board will be more likely to make sound decisions, regardless of the political ramifications at home.

Considering the vast difference in the factors likely to inform the decision-making of the two boards, a reasonable case could be made that SPSA should have postponed any decision on its various buyout offers. Hampton Roads taxpayers will never know what better ideas the newly reconstituted SPSA board of directors might have suggested to begin solving the Authority’s problems. And that new board will be stuck with this decision, however unfortunate it might be.

One thing that citizens can be glad about is this: The choice to sell the waste-to-energy plant could be the last bad decision the current SPSA board ever will make.

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