LANSING – Raising the ante on the issue of building a new Detroit River international crossing, a top executive with the Ambassador Bridge company announced Wednesday that it would offer toll credits to the state to match federal funding.
Matthew Moroun, a director of Centra Incorporated, which is the umbrella company for the Ambassador Bridge’s company (the Detroit International Bridge Company) and son of the owners of the company, said the toll credits would be offered to the state without condition, and would be available even if the state moves ahead to build the DRIC.
Ultimately, up to $875 million would be available for use as toll credits (though that includes an estimated $500 million the company wants to spend on building a new bridge next to the Ambassador Bridge).
Now, between $250 million and $290 million would be available, Moroun said at a press conference. The final figure will depend on reviews of audits that track the firm’s spending going back to 1992. Those audits will be given to both the House and Senate, he said.
The press conference was marked by a Senate sergeant-at-arms having to escort a Detroit-area critic of the Moroun family from the room after he loudly challenged Moroun’s calculations on how much in federal funds the toll credits would raise.
And supporters of the DRIC (which the administration of Governor Rick Snyder now calls the New International Trade Crossing) said Ambassador Bridge officials have offered toll credits to the state before if the DRIC was not built.
The difference in this offer is that it is an “unconditional offer to the state,” Moroun said.
“There are no rules, conditions or exchanges on this offer,” he said. “They can reach out and grab it because we’re holding it out to them.”
While Moroun did not say so specifically during the press conference, clearly the company hopes the offer will dampen efforts to win approval of funding for the DRIC. Moroun said the state has relied successfully on a privately run bridge to facilitate crossings between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, and he hoped the state would still rely on a privately owned and managed bridge in the future.
The press conference was marked with several photos of what a new cable-stay bridge, with its projected anchor towers soaring high above the towers of the Ambassador Bridge, would look like.
Moroun said the offer was being made in part because of the trouble the state was having in meeting federal funding matches for highway and transportation projects.
However, the offer also comes after Snyder announced that $550 million the Canadian government had offered as a loan to pay the state’s cost of building roads and approaches to the new bridge could be used for matching funds.
But Moroun said the toll credits would be more valuable because federal funding would only be available on expenditures already made.
Marc Hesse, a Detroit roofer who told reporters he lives in the shadow of Moroun’s “trash can,” challenged Moroun, saying his toll credits would only get 80 cents on the dollar of their value, where the Canadian offer could leverage more money.
Hesse was escorted from the press conference. He told reporters later he was tired of what he said was the Moroun family not taking action to fix up buildings they own in the city.
And Tom Shields, a spokesperson for DRIC supporters, said the offer of toll credits would not match the estimated $2.2 billion the state would get in federal matching funds generated by the DRIC.
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