KABATA picks new number-crunchers

MAT-SU — The Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority is poised to award the contract for a review of its traffic and revenue data.

A press release from the authority Wednesday says that Cardno Inc., an Australian firm with offices worldwide, and Alaska firm Agnew::Beck “received an intent to award letter” for the contract.

The contract is to do two things. First, the authority wants to update its 2007 socioeconomic data.

In an interview last month, Shannon McCarthy said that the authority wasn’t sure it would need to update those numbers; however, with the project delayed a year, it will definitely need new numbers.

“The updated socio-economic data developed by the Cardno/Agnew::Beck team will be incorporated into ongoing traffic and revenue forecasts for the crossing,” KABATA says in a press release. “Variables such as changes in the regional, Alaska and national population, employment and economies since the last independent socio-economic study for the crossing was completed will all be factored in to the update.”

Secondly, the authority hopes to get a “peer review” on the socio-economic data. KABATA’s numbers have been called into question and that kind of review from an outside economist is a means to weigh KABATA’s numbers and other competing numbers from a legislative audit and from the University of Alaska’s Institute for Social and Economic Research, which has been critical of bridge authority numbers.

“Socioeconomic data” in this case refers to projections for population growth that lay the basis for bridge traffic projections. The traffic projections, in turn, determine how much money KABATA believes it will receive in tolls. And toll revenue is what is expected to pay for the bridge.

It’s important to the state because KABATA is asking that the Legislature agree to establish and fund a reserve account to cover potential shortfalls. If those numbers are overly optimistic, the state will have to dip deeper into that fund or wait longer to be re-paid.

Which, of course, is why it was big news when a legislative audit last session called KABATA’s numbers overly optimistic.

Authority officials argue that the auditors were incorrect in their assessment, especially regarding population growth in the Point MacKenzie area. The bridge itself is expected to accelerate population growth in the region.

Bridge backers have said that the auditors didn’t take much, if any, of that kind of growth into account.

On the other side, many legislators have used the audit to say that KABATA had lost credibility. That prospect led to a push in the state House at the end of this year’s legislative session to fold KABATA into the Alaska Housing Finance Corp., eventually dissolving the authority.

That move passed the House, but stalled in the Senate when the session ended. Because the Legislature works on two-year cycles, the effort will still be active when the 2014 session begins in January 2014.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.