Chesapeake lawmaker again pushes for SPSA revamp

A state delegate is spearheading two bills this year that would crack down on SPSA, making it more difficult for the regional waste authority to borrow money, requiring more transparency and accounting of business deals, and empowering the governor to appoint a board of directors.

It is the third consecutive year that Del. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, has sought to reform the Southeastern Public Service Authority through legislation in Richmond.

His latest bills, HB1871 and HB1872, were filed late Monday. They come in the wake of a highly critical audit, which Cosgrove urged last year, and as SPSA struggles to survive while weighing offers from private companies to buy pieces of the trash agency serving much of South Hampton Roads.

Cosgrove said Tuesday that his goal is simple.

"I would just prefer to see SPSA go away," he said.

Short of that, though, "it needs to be totally restructured," Cosgrove said. "It can't be fixed with the same people and the same system we have now."

A SPSA spokesman, Tom Kreidel, responded that the agency had just received copies of the bills and were analyzing them Tuesday. He declined to comment but said the agency intends to meet with Cosgrove to discuss them.

Cosgrove has faced questions in recent months about his role and fervency in battling SPSA.

Since at least 2006, Cosgrove has worked for Waterway Consulting, a private engineering firm in Chesapeake. In March, he appeared before SPSA's board on behalf of Waterway Recycling, a client that competes with SPSA for construction and demolition debris.

At the meeting, Cosgrove protested a SPSA rate change for such waste materials, raising eyebrows among some board members and agency officials about a potential conflict of interest.

Bucky Taylor, SPSA's executive director, said in a recent interview that he is aware of Cosgrove's ties to Waterway Recycling and that the issue has been discussed internally among staff and attorneys.

"We've kind of wondered about that too," Taylor said.

On Tuesday, Cosgrove dismissed the criticism, saying his bills always are about "SPSA in the larger context, in how we can make the place functional," and are not specific to construction and demolition debris.

"It's a silly argument" to say his work for Waterway Recycling should disqualify him from regulating SPSA, he said. "This is a taxpayer issue, not about anything else."

SPSA is about $240 million in debt and faces shrinking revenues and a $16 million deficit. It has proposed to hike municipal disposal fees to $245 per ton of garbage, which would be the highest rate in the nation.

One of the bills would allow any SPSA member - it serves Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Franklin, Southampton County and Isle of Wight County - to petition for involuntary bankruptcy.

A receiver could then be appointed, the bill says, "to manage, operate or liquidate" all of SPSA's assets and use the proceeds to pay off debts.

The second bill would require the governor to appoint board members after each city nominates three candidates, none of whom could be an elected official. They would serve four-year terms.

"We need businesspeople running things, not political people," Cosgrove said.

The bill also would require SPSA to keep a detailed and public financing plan, stat ing how borrowed money would be spent and how the debt would be retired. The board could block new indebtedness when 25 percent of its members voted no.

Cosgrove said he hopes SPSA does not oppose the bills in Richmond. If it does, he wants to see a full accounting of its spending on lawyers and lobbyists.

Two of SPSA's lobbying and legal arms contributed money to Cosgrove's political campaign last year - $250 from Willcox & Savage, a Norfolk law firm, and $750 from Kemper Consulting, a longtime lobbying firm for SPSA, according to state records.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com