LANSING – Outside the Detroit International Bridge Company, a majority of business owners in the state appear to be supporting construction of the New International Trade Crossing, but that support is not moving its way down the ladder, Lt. Governor Brian Calley and Roy Norton, the Canadian counsel to Detroit, told those at a Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce event Friday.
Calley and Norton were essentially preaching to the choir in bringing usual presentation to the business group, with the Chamber board already having officially supported the new bridge and likely all of those gathered (who were not media) backing the plan.
Those business leaders now need to talk to their employees and their “networks” to generate additional support for the bridge, and opposition to the ballot proposal designed to block it, the two leaders said.
Getting the bridge supporters’ story out should be sufficient to spread support, Mr. Norton said. “Everywhere that folks become familiar with this project, they understand its virtues and its value to their region,” he said.
There will be a full campaign to oppose the ballot measure, Calley said.
“It’s a story that will have to be told on the airwaves, on TV and radio and in mailboxes,” he said. “The problem is getting the right information out and then motivating people to take an interest in it.”
That means supporters have to add their voices in helping to spread that message.
“I’ve talked to company owners who put their company names out there (as supporting the bridge),” Norton said. “But then I’ve talked to employees who only know what they know from the TV ads.”
He said the business owners had to work to translate their support into support from their workforce.
Mickey Blashfield, director of The People Should Decide, said Norton’s findings on the attitudes of workers shows that average residents understand the issue.
“We understand Lt. Governor Calley’s frustration as more and more Michigan voters reject the idea that there is such a thing as a ‘free’ bridge, but that doesn’t give him license to bend the truth,” Blashfield said in a statement responding to the presentation. “No amount of spin can change the fact that Michigan has already spent $41 million on a bridge study, taxpayers will have to shell out at least $263 million for a new customs plaza, and they could then be on the hook to cover hundreds of millions in lost tax revenue if the rosy predictions of politicians don’t pan out. That’s not free and the voters know it. With so much on the line, the people should decide how their money is best spent.”
Because the agreement calls for Canada to pick up all of the construction costs and to cover any funding shortfalls, Calley said passage of the ballot proposal by The People Should Decide, largely backed by the DIBC and requiring voter approval to use state funds for any international crossing, would not block the new bridge.
But the constitutional amendment would delay the bridge, extending at least for a while the DIBC’s control over travel across the border, Calley said.
“If they can prevent (the new bridge) for even one year or two years, it’s worth more than the money they spent (opposing the bridge),” Calley said.
“If the Constitution were to be amended, it’s easy to imagine that the Ambassador Bridge owners would use that for more stunts and game playing,” Norton said, adding they would likely be “relentless” in trying to get the new bridge stopped through the courts.
The amendment could block other projects under discussion, Calley said, particularly plans to rebuild the rail tunnel under the Detroit River to allow passage of double-stacked container cars. “That wouldn’t be able to go through if this went through,” he said.
But defeating the proposal could end the DIBC’s attempts to block any additional border crossing expansions. “Will anybody take them seriously if they ask the people to decide and the people decide they’ve heard enough?” he said.
Calley and Norton ran through the usual arguments favoring the bridge, including the growth in commercial traffic over the Ambassador Bridge in recent months, the delays on that bridge because of the small area for customs and the lack of connection to expressways (and the unlikelihood of those connections ever happening), and the need for redundancy.
Interestingly, the two did not touch on the recent brief closure of the bridge because of a bomb threat.
They also discussed the funding agreement, which has Canada paying all the construction costs for the plazas on both sides of the bridge and a private company paying for the actual bridge construction. Tolls would then repay those costs, expected to take some 45 years.
Once the bridge is paid off, Michigan and Canada would split the net proceeds after the bridge’s costs were covered, an expected $50 million annual yield for each.
In addition to disputing the allegations in the ads run by the DIBC that Michigan taxpayers will end up picking up the tab for cost overruns or toll shortages, the two also rejected more recent ad arguments that Michigan would have to pay for operation of the customs plazas on the American side. Those operations would be covered by the federal government as they are at the Ambassador Bridge, the two said.
One place where the state will lose out, Calley said, is on toll collection jobs. “Because the Legislature decided not to vote on this, we can never have a tolling operation on the Michigan side,” he said, adding that legislation would be needed to allow tolls to be collected on a state highway.
Norton said there is no alternative of building a second span at the Ambassador Bridge site. He said the DIBC’s recent refilling of its main permit applications would, based on the time to get approvals for the NITC, put construction on any new bridge at the Ambassador site out at least five years.
But those permits are not likely to be approved, he said, because Windsor is opposed to any additional traffic being routed to the streets that feed the bridge on that side.
The NITC, in contrast, moved another step toward approval Friday with the expiration of the comment period on the presidential permit required for a state to enter into an agreement with a foreign nation. Calley said his discussions with federal officials so far indicate the permit will be issued and that most of the comments received favored that outcome.
Calley said the bridge would still need U.S. Coast Guard approval, but he said that also was not likely much of a road block because the current design does not call for any piers in the river that would affect shipping.
“We’re hopeful to have everything in place to where come next spring there would be construction happening,” he said.
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