State Official: Greenway Toll Hike Can't Be Reversed

By Bill Brubaker (Contact)

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The chairman of Virginia's State Corporation Commission has rebuffed a request by a state House candidate to suspend toll increases approved for the Dulles Greenway.

Theodore V. Morrison Jr. also refuted a suggestion by Lynn Chapman, a Republican who is running in the 32nd House District, that the SCC's research and data justifying the rate increases were flawed because they were based on a financial analysis of the local operator of the Greenway, not on the Australian company that owns its stock.

"To assert that this Commission and its staff is so incompetent as to have performed a financial analysis 'on the wrong entity' would be insulting were it not so absurd," Morrison wrote in an Oct. 19 letter to Chapman.

Morrison said he was giving his own view and not writing on behalf of the other SCC members.

Chapman, who is seeking to unseat David E. Poisson (D) in a district that represents northeastern Loudoun County, had suggested in interviews and in a letter to the commission that the SCC review financial statements of the Australian company that controls the local operator of the Greenway.

Morrison said the SCC only has jurisdiction over the local operator — Toll Road Investors Partnership II (TRIP II) — not over its investors.

"This is exactly the same way our regulation of all public service corporations is accomplished," he wrote. "For example, we regulate the rates and service of Virginia Electric and Power Company, but we cannot and do not analyze or consider the finances of its beneficial owner, Dominion Resources Inc., in fulfilling our regulatory responsibilities."

TRIP II recently won approval to increase tolls for a one-way trip from $3 to as much as $4.80 by 2012, an increase that has been denounced by some state lawmakers and candidates.

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