So there was President Bush, stepping to a microphone outside the White House just before 8 a.m., a somber line of world finance ministers stretched out behind him.

He was speaking about the need for liquidity in the world’s credit markets, for confidence in the economic systems.

Then the ax fell.

Actually, it was a guillotine.

NBC had broken into the Today Show to cut to their Special Report on the Bush appearance.

But moments into his comments, there was a flash of a second or two of a commercial for the new Broadway production of “A Tale of Two Cities.”

The voice-over intoned the line, “It was the best of times, it was the worse of times” and the image shifted to a guillotine blade falling.

We’ll have to watch and see if that was symbolic of the end of the Bush administration and the collapse of the world’s economy or just the end of someone’s career at NBC.

I’m thinking it was probably two of the three.

We’ve just wrapped up Week 1 of Editorial Board meetings with candidates in local contested races. In Rockland, that means seven races, not counting the Congressional contests.

For the state Assembly and state Senate races, we’re doing something a little different this year, and using Mogulus to stream the interviews live. Look here to take a view.  We just got done with the 38th State Senate District, with  Republican incumbent Thomas Morahan and Democratic challenger Gregory Julian.  It was a great discussion. Take a look-see.

Ran over to Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory open house yesterday in Palisades.  Amazing stuff. If you haven’t gone in years past, look for it again in the fall. Imagine hearing climate change explained right to you by a leading scientist (maybe one of the 14 Lamont scientists who, along with their colleagues at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore). I listened to one climate expert explaining to a boy about age 7 the concept of added impact on the natural cycle of climate change by human behavior—like adding pushing a swing makes it accelerate, and go faster.

Lamont’s research around the world is well-known, and their scientists have offered their expertise on issues close to home, as well, including aiding in studies of arsenic found in well water in Rockland, the overall health of the Hudson, and recent seismic discoveries in the Lower Hudson Valley and New York City that show differnt earthquake patterns than previously thought.

If those aren’t reasons enough to go next year, there’s the campus itself: Sprawling areas, woodsy, with breathtaking views of the Hudson. All that, and you may learn something. I did.

The youngest Baird kid is making her way from from West Virginia this afternoon and evening and reports having some problems getting Exxon gas along the route home.

She’s got an Exxon credit card for trips like this, but has tried four Exxon stations in Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey and all were out of gas. One that was an Exxon station no longer is.

We’ve been hearing about the gasoline shortage in the southeast and how there stations that are pumped dry and long lines and long waits at those that have fuel.

About 10 days ago, my favorite over-the-line into New Jersey station in Mahwah was out of regular unleaded. But it was just a spot thing. It’s been pumping just fine since then.

But today’s report—across at least a few states—is distressing, even if it involves only one gas company.

OK. So the county starts to get complaints that someone is operating a bus along the run between Suffern and Nyack.

They get the hint that someone is cutting in on a TOR bus route when people report that the driver won’t accept transfers and coupons.

The story goes that the fake bus was operating either right ahead or or right behind a TOR bus.

But if a fake bus was beating a real one to the riders on their route, you’d think a county driver would have reported that. Or, if it was following behind, you think they’d notice and wonder if they were being stalked.

Either way, you think the county would have been alerted by its drivers long before there were complaints from riders.

So, I said I would get back to you on the Manhattan conference on “The Private Role in Public Infrastructure” that I attended Thursday. That was, coincidentally, on the day Gov. David Paterson was establishing the “New York State Commission on State Asset Maximization” to study potential public-private partnerships for the state.
So, what did I find out? Lots. What about specifics for New York? Little.
Will a new Tappan Zee Bridge be the state’s big foray in public-private partnerships? Will it be built by, and leased to, a private entity? Could be.
Is that a bad thing? Is that a good thing? Could be.
The Manhattan Institute, a policy think tank, put together quite a panel of leading stars in the public-private partnership world. Those deals that have private entities involved in public infrastructure (from roads to hospitals to airports) are often called PPPs or the techno-cute P3 — makes them sound less scary, no? The U.S. lags behind other countries in using these kinds of partnerships, but new ideas for projects are popping up — with mixed success. Participants at Thursday’s conference in Midtown didn’t agree on the formula for success for a project, or even the same concerns about the risks and limitations of such partnerships. But, almost all agreed on what it took to make public private partnerships an option: Strong political will.
Does Paterson have it? The governor has been almost ruthless in cutting costs to tame a multi-billion-dollar deficit that will only grow as Wall Street retreats. He’s hardly shied away from tough decisions, like vetoing 171 pieces of legislation since June, even bills that would have provided services that would improve New Yorker’s lives, because they would add $531.7 million to state budget costs over the next two years. But he’s yet to get state legislators on board with real property tax reform. While just the act of forming such a commission in the first place shows he’s willing to change the way state government does business, it’s a real question if Albany is capable of the complex and careful negotiations such partnership deals entail.
Of course, the biggest fish in the state’s sea of infrastructure needs is the recently announced plan to build a new Tappan Zee Bridge, plus adding much-needed public transportation to the Interstate 287 corridor. The project now carries a whopping $16 billion price-tag, with no state or federal money committed to it.
Samara Barend, the executive director Paterson’s newly minted state panel, was at The Manhattan Institute to talk about New York’s take on PPPs. Barend was purposefully vague on details. But she did raise the idea of the state using a popular public-private partnership formula for the Tappan Zee replacement. “A build-operate-transfer project? Could be,” she said during her speech.
Build-Operate-Transfer agreements (again, they get a nonthreatening acronym, BOTs) has a private entity finance, design, construct, and operate a facility for a certain period, collecting tolls, fees or rentals for that time period to recoup its investment. When that period ends, ownership is transferred back to the government.
“The governor has not said we have to have privatization,” Barend told the Manhattan Institute gathering, but rather wants the panel to “look to see whether or not it’s right for New York state.”
The luncheon keynote speaker was U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters. She’s a big fan of PPPs, and congestion pricing, and auctioning landing slots, and just about any other way to use private market models in the public sector. She, of course, lauded the speakers, and New York’s foray into exploring PPPs. She said that by being slow to embrace the concept of PPPs, Americans are hurting our “ability to compete worldwide” because our infrastructure is weak. She said we’re putting “the brake, rather than accelerator, on our economy.”
Not everyone, though, gathered Thursday was as eager to tell New Yorkers just to sign on the dotted line.
“There’s no cookie-cutter contract; each is idiosyncratic,” said Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez, a Harvard professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy considered a leading expert on the PPP concept.
Balance that, though, with the Manhattan Institute’s E.J. McMahon’s observation that New York City and state are the “best case study on how not to address infrastructure needs.”
Then there’s the governor’s own words: “Public-private partnerships are not the only answer, but we need to honestly assess whether they can be part of the solution.”
The takeaway? Proceed, yes, but with caution.

I wasn’t much of a fan when Michael Bloomberg took over leadership of New York City after Sept. 11. In fact, I wouldn’t have minded if Rudy Giuliani had prevailed in his brief attempt to get his term in office extended to make for a smoother transition.

But all these years later, I have to admit I’ve been pretty impressed and if Bloomberg wants to try for a third term, I’d say give him the shot.

I’ve never been a fan of term limits, believing that we get to impose our own term limit on any candidate when they run for re-election. At least that was the theory until we started seeing the trend to unopposed candidates or ones facing only token opposition.

That’s not likely to be the case in New York City. If Bloomberg is on the ballot, I’m bet he faces serious opposition from Democrats who wanted a clear shot at the Mayor’s Office and from Republicans.

The only problem for me is that, as we get closer and closer to November, I wish more and more that Bloomberg had opted to make a third-party run for the White House.

His expertise, displayed so well in New York City, would serve us well in Washington.

Today, a couple of us edit board-types received an e-mail invitation to a conference on “The Private Role in Public Infrastructure” at the Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute. Seems today’s editorial, and news story, about Gov. Paterson’ plans to appoint a panel to consider ways to get private investment in state infrastructure projects, which would of course include the new $16 billion new bridge and double-latte transportation frappucino for Rockland (both a bus rapid transit system across the 30-mile corridor from Port Chester to Suffern, and a commuter-rail-ready bridge that would allow trains to be added later across Rockland.

The conference in midtown tomorrow morning will have a panel discussion on the Role of Private Capital in Public Infrastructure Projects and other that would include case studies. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters is the keynote speaker.

Here’s the statement from the agenda: Infrastructure—whether in the form of roads, bridges, tunnels, passenger rail, pipelines or power lines—is critical to sustained economic growth and quality of life. Yet we in the United States have had increasing difficulty maintaining our existing infrastructure and building vital new projects. How can we close this infrastructure gap? In infrastructure innovation, we explore the possible roles of private sector finance and management, whether as a complement or as a substitute for traditional government ownership and operation. Please join us for a discussion among leading public officials, scholars and investors on this crucial topic.

I’ll let you know how it sounds.