Reading the stories about the proposed Turnpike lease, I come away wary.

The Turnpike, whatever you might say about it, is a public asset. The privatization of what the public has already paid for seems the next big wave in governance, as governments like Pennsylvania become desperate to raise new revenue. Since we can’t raise taxes, the public wouldn’t put up with that, the only other option is to be creative. Casinos were one aspect of that “creativity”; giving away public assets is another.

Of course, “giving away” is a misnomer. The Spanish consortium that would lease, operate and maintain the road would pay $12.8 billion for 75 years:

If the money from Barcelona-based Abertis Infraestructuras is invested properly, Mr. Rendell said yesterday, the one-time, upfront payment could result in Pennsylvania getting $1.1 billion a year. The money would be used to fix 9,000 miles of deteriorated highways and 5,000 structurally deficient bridges and to financially bolster dozens of mass transit agencies around the state, including the Port Authority of Allegheny County.

That’s obviously a worthy pursuit, but is this a best-case scenario? I suspect it is. What if - and heaven forbid, but then again we’re talking Pennsylvania here - the money isn’t invested wisely?

The deal, I suspect, is worth Abertis Infraestructuras’ time because when the existing labor contracts are up, the outfit will lowball the unions - maybe undermine them entirely. And, this effectively puts the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission out of business. Not a bad thing, and in fact, it probably takes a private outfit to do this. The political will to get rid of the patronage machine would not otherwise exist.

But I’m left to wonder: What will it ultimately cost to travel the Pennsylvania Turnpike?

Tolls are already going up - 25 percent beginning in January, according to Act 44; thereafter, a yearly hike of either 2.5 percent or the rate of inflation as reflected in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is larger.

Just for the sake of comparison, in April, the CPI was up 3.9 percent from the following year.

But might deals like this also have other, unintended consequences? For whatever reason, the deregulation of the electricity industry comes to mind. What was touted as the “best,” most competitive choice, deregulation, is turning out to be a disastrous one for consumers, once the likes of PPL get through with their massive rate hikes over the next few years. That was a decision that will have ramifications for years; so, too, will be the Turnpike lease decision.

But the thing is, unless Pennsylvanians would themselves agree to new and higher taxes, or tolls beyond what Act 44 instituted - there’s no real choice, is there? The need to shop the Turnpike around is an indicator of the decay of our system; individual states are so desperate for infrastructure funding that they’ll actually turn control of that infrastructure to corporate entities. That, in turn, cedes additional power to those corporate entities, over the citizens who up to now have owned these roads.

It is, in other words, another milepost on the road to what might be called the corporatization of America, whereby private companies have more control than anytime in recent memory. Government backs away either for ideological reaons or, in this case, because it doesn’t have the money and citizens refuse to provide the money. So we’re stuck - privatization or bust. And there’s more of it to come.