Policy makers in Pennsylvania wanted the $12.8 billion lump-sum payment from Abertis/Citi to last as long as possible, preferably the full 75 years of the lease. How long the funds would have lasted would have depended on the investment returns and expenditure strategy; the lease proposal did not set out a timetable or plan for the state to spend the proceeds. While the administration estimated that the principal would generate more than $1 billion a year to pay for infrastructure improvements, the state instead could have opted to spend the principal over a shorter period of time, enabling a more significant short-term infrastructure investment, as is planned in Indiana.
During legislative hearings, several experts-some who favored the lease proposal and others who opposed it-agreed that the principal would likely run out in about 15 years.78
The lack of a well-articulated plan for how to spend the proceeds also was a cause for concern to lawmakers. In both the Chicago Skyway and Indiana Toll Road leases, plans for spending the proceeds were set out from the start; in Pennsylvania, a three-member board of the governor, the budget secretary and the transportation secretary would have been responsible for determining how much would be withdrawn and spent and what it would be spent on. An informal consensus was reached among the governor and other parties to commit to the same proportion of 56 percent highway funding and 44 percent mass transit funding, as in Act 44, but some legislators doubted that future governors and boards would adhere to that. "You know that would be the first pot of money that we'd grab," says Representative Harper.79 States should plan for how to spend lease proceeds. Although those details were not stipulated in the original agreement, Pennsylvania legislators could have added them to the legislation.