Road Tolls Ring Up Heavyweight Backer.

BYLINE: By Angela Greiling Keane

Supporters of highway tolls have a former prominent Democratic leader on their side as Democrats who oppose tolling are poised to take majority control of Congress next month.

Richard Gephardt, the former House majority and minority leader who is now a consultant to investment bank Goldman Sachs, told a recent American Road and Transportation Builders Association meeting that he plans to play an active role on behalf of tolls next year.

"I'm going to meet with them, for starters, and talk to them," Gephardt said. "When they see the facts, because they are such supporters of public infrastructure, they're going to see we're not going to get where we want without (public-private partnerships)."

Potential congressional opponents include future committee chairpersons such as Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., who is in line to lead the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who will lead the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Gephardt has spoken around the country to lawmakers and the general public about the benefits of public-private partnerships, which for highways nearly always mean tolls. He retired from Congress in early 2005 and soon signed on with both Goldman Sachs, which helped broker deals for long-term leases of the Indiana Toll Road and the Chicago Skyway to foreign companies, and DLA Piper, a large law firm that has an active public-private partnership practice.

At the association's conference last month in Washington, Gephardt was speaking to a sympathetic audience, mostly officials at companies that have or want public-private transportation contracts. He concedes not all elected officials or citizens share his enthusiasm for more toll roads, which the ...