The Pennsylvania Turnpike lease proposal included detailed service requirements based on the turnpike's current maintenance standards, and both the maintenance agreement and penalty sections of the lease set penalties if Abertis/Citi failed to meet those standards. But while the lease agreement specified performance criteria in great detail-such as the number of times that a ramp needed to be swept and the speed with which roadkill had to be cleared-the measures generally focused on prescribed tasks rather than desired results.
It would have been crucial to ensure that Pennsylvania had the capacity to monitor the turnpike operation on an ongoing basis throughout the entire 75-year period of the lease. The agreement called for annual audits of the road by PennDOT-the costs of which would have been reimbursed by Abertis/Citi-but it did not further specify how performance measures would be monitored or how the state might keep tabs on rider complaints or satisfaction with the road. The proposed oversight structure involved a three-member board consisting of the governor, the budget secretary and the transportation secretary, with no representation or power of appointment from the legislature and no representation from the public. Some state lawmakers said they were hesitant to move forward with the deal because they would have little voice in decisions made about the turnpike after it was signed.86 It is worth noting, however, that the legislature could have modified the oversight structure in the legislation.
Although the Pennsylvania proposal did not specify conditions for a buyback-one missing element that could have limited the state's flexibility over the course of the lease-it did handle most of the lease-end details appropriately. The lease would have allowed the concession to revert back to the public sector in the event of a default or bankruptcy and provided a number of ways to declare Abertis/Citi in default, such as a failure to maintain the road to the standards specified in the contract. After 75 years, when the lease came to its natural end and the system was to be handed back to Pennsylvania, the contract required the road to be "in good order condition and repair, according to maintenance standards," and free of any liabilities the state would have had to assume, such as ongoing lawsuits or debt.