Bay Area
Toll Authority Honored With Western Region “Deal of the Year”
Award by Leading Financial Publication
The Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) took Far West
Region honors for 2002 in the inaugural “Deal of the Year Awards”
sponsored by The Bond Buyer, a New York City-based publication
specializing in municipal finance. The award is in recognition of
“innovation in the public finance market.”
One of five regional winners out of a pool of 35
nominations, BATA was honored for engineering an “interest-rate
swap” in January 2002 which enabled the agency to lock in low
fixed-interest rates (4.105% for 35 years) on $300 million in
variable-rate bonds. The transaction affected bonds that were part
of BATA’s first-ever debt offering, which was completed in 2001.
BATA’s chief financial officer and the architect
of the winning transaction, Brian Mayhew, received the award on
behalf of BATA at a special awards dinner held in New York on
Tuesday evening. “We are thrilled to be one of the first
recipients of this new award,” said Mayhew. “It has special
meaning for us, since BATA itself is a new entrant in the bond
market. To receive this kind of recognition so early in BATA’s
financial career is indeed a high honor.”
Proceeds from the BATA bonds are being used to
finance the Regional Measure 1 program of major improvements to Bay
Area toll bridges, including new spans for the Carquinez and
Benicia-Martinez bridges and a widening of the San Mateo-Hayward
Bridge.
Regional Measure 1 (RM 1) is the 1988 ballot
measure that authorized a standard base auto toll of $1 to fund a
$1.8 billion overhaul and upgrade of Bay Area toll bridges and their
approaches, along with other traffic-relieving projects.
Responsibility for overseeing the RM 1 program passed to BATA (from
the California Transportation Commission) in 1998, at the time of
BATA’s creation by an act of the California Legislature. The
second dollar of the $2 toll now paid by bridge users was added in
1998 to pay for a separate, Caltrans-administered bridge seismic
retrofit program, including a new east span of the San
Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
When originally issued in mid-2001, the BATA bonds
were given top marks for creditworthiness by the major credit rating
agencies, receiving ‘AA’ ratings from Fitch and Standard &
Poor’s, and an ‘Aa3’ from Moody’s. Standard & Poor’s
noted in its credit profile that BATA’s ‘AA’ rating “…
represents one of the highest credit ratings Standard & Poor’s
carries on a toll agency, and the highest among all
transportation-related enterprises.”
MTC is the transportation planning, coordinating,
and financing agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.
Operating as BATA, the agency also is responsible for the
programming, administration, and allocation of toll revenues from
the $1 base toll on the seven state-owned toll bridges in the
region.
For more information on BATA and its activities,
visit the BATA Web site at www.mtc.ca.gov/bata/index.htm.