As early as 1998, high-ranking state transportation officials feared a proposed sale of private toll lanes in the median of the 91 Freeway would appear to be a "sweetheart deal" and allow the sellers to "reap a windfall" from state bonds proceeds.
Yet in late 1999, Caltrans Director Jose Medina approved the transaction, which was later abandoned after newspaper revelations and an outcry from key public officials raised the same questions.
Caltrans' private misgivings about the deal--as well as Medina's actions to approve it at the behest of the private roadway's operators--will be the subject of a Feb. 1 hearing of the joint Senate and Assembly Transportation Committee. Medina agreed to the sale as part of a settlement of a costly lawsuit brought by the California Private Transportation Co., which operates the lanes.
Details about the internal back-and-forth over the proposed sale of the 91 Express Lanes are outlined in documents released in advance of the hearing to lawmakers and, through a separate request, The Times.
The documents don't make it clear whether Medina was aware of the internal debate over the transaction. Medina has refused repeated requests for interviews.
But internal memos, deposition transcripts and other correspondence show that transportation officials, who are now Medina's top aides, were well aware of the public sensitivity to the transaction. At one point, they even expressed concern that the political fallout would hurt the presidential aspirations of then-Gov. Pete Wilson.
"The Year 2000 is still on the governor's mind," one official wrote.
Despite the misgivings, James van Loben Sels, Medina's predecessor, recommended approving the deal, which allowed the state's only private road to be sold to a nonprofit corporation created expressly to buy the 10-mile stretch of roadway.
But Van Loben Sels' boss, then-Transportation Secretary Dean Dunphy, nixed the idea in the summer of 1998, the documents show. He suggested to the private company that operates the toll lanes to try again under a different administration.
They did. Within weeks of Gov. Gray Davis' January 1999 inauguration, the toll group traveled to Sacramento to gain Medina's support.
The deal called for the private company to sell the lanes to NewTrac, a nonprofit group of Orange County and Riverside County businesspeople. The private operator stood to clear about $90 million on the 10 miles of money-losing toll lanes that opened in late 1995. The lanes are the only private road in the state and run along the median of the Riverside Freeway near the Orange County/Riverside County border.
