Schwarzenegger Pushing P3s

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he will renew his push for public-private partnerships in transportation during 2008. “P3 is part of our overall economic development strategy for California, and you will hear much more about that in my state of the state address this coming January. We will be talking about that a lot,” Schwarzenegger said Tuesday in his keynote address at a conference on California’s digital infrastructure organized by the University of Southern California Annenberg School’s Center for the Digital Future. It’s not the first time the Republican governor has endorsed P3s, but so far the reaction from Democrats, who control the Legislature, has been cool. “Simply put, to keep our economy moving we have to do everything that we can in order to create the infrastructure faster, cheaper, and better, and I think that we can do that with the public-private partnership,” Schwarzenegger said. “It’s just that right now it is such a new concept for our legislators that they’re not there yet 100%. They are concerned about it, they’re suspicious about it, what it means, and so I think it will take a little bit of time. But I think the next round of infrastructure that we’re going to do there will be much more public-private partnerships.”