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.”
Published: January, 2003
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.
