Oh, the places my bills could go!

Such thoughts occurred after the first of two public rate-increase hearings held by the Delaware River Port Authority. The crowd was angry and vocal, though "less than I expected," said Jeffrey Nash, DRPA board vice chairman.

That's what happens when you conduct hearings during a July heat wave in Camden and at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, places most commuters don't live.

In the last nine years, DRPA disbursed $375 million in "economic development" to the Kimmel Center, the National Constitution Center, and Lincoln Financial Field. Today, the authority is $1.2 billion in debt. It has proposed raising PATCO fees 10 percent and tolls a buck, the latter a 33 percent increase.

If DRPA were a publicly held company, no one would invest. The head reels studying the intricate nest of political connections. It's a river-based House of Borgia given to absurd expenditures directed toward well-connected pals.

This year, three-quarters of DRPA's $229 million annual revenues will go for debt service, lovely salaries and swell pensions.

So the authority goes trawling for rate increases, income from citizens like AmeriCorps worker Nicole Yarbrough, who spends $150 monthly of her not-so-grand paycheck commuting on public transit.

"I don't want to drive," she said. "But this is costing as much."

A bridge too far

Earlier this year, Nash declared that "the days of throwing money into the Delaware River are over."

No, instead DRPA lobbed $10 million to Chester.

That amount is "a fraction of what we need," CEO John Matheussen said. To him, $10 million "wouldn't make a large difference in the amount of a toll increase."

"Ten million dollars is a lot of money," Nash concurred, in what begins to sound like DRPA's mantra, "but it's not going to repave the Walt Whitman Bridge."

Really, it couldn't hurt.

The bridge needs $170 million in redecking. Ten million here, $5 million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.

This spending is akin to looking at your home's leaking roof and ballooning mortgage and deciding you need to build a pool. For your cousin in Altoona.

Troubled waters

"These are farce meetings. They come with doom and gloom," he said. "They never show the public actual projections of operating expenses and revenues. You can't trust them. They're rife with waste and patronage."

DRPA has $35 million in an economic-development fund that has yet to be allocated. At the hearing, Matheussen and four other officials - cumulative annual income: $657,754 - refused to say what they would do with that money.

"Yes, $35 million is a lot of money, but that would not change what we need even if it was returned to the general fund," Nash said.

Oh, that again.

People don't want to pay for stadiums or a museum when the bridge they're on needs repairs and debt service clots at $271,233 daily.

"They're asking us to pay more because of their incompetence and malfeasance," Basewitz said.

The rate-hike vote is scheduled for next month. If approved, the initial increase goes into effect in September; the second in 2010. If you don't think this is a done deal, well, I've got a bridge to sell you.