behind closed doors

Personally, I've never been fond of decisions involving public money that are made from behind closed doors. 

Public-private partnerships allow your government to non-competitively award public contracts to private companies, even though contracts with private companies are awarded competitively for most public works projects. Typically, private companies compete in open competition with other private companies for public contracts.

Deciding to award public contracts non-competitively to private companies from behind closed doors is bad enough; however, when the practice results in a "monumental debacle", injury is added to insult. Such is the case with the Silver Spring Transit Center.

On the heels of the "monumental debacle" Silver Spring Transit Center comes another public-private partnership--the Purple Line. Again, public contracts have been and will be awarded non-competitively to private companies based on what goes down behind closed doors. 

The BIG difference between the public-private partnership Silver Spring Transit Center and the public-private partnership Purple Line is that the projected cost for the SSTC was $20 million 20 years ago. The current projected cost for the Purple Line is $2.45 BILLION, which is more than 17 times the SSTC's current projected cost of $141 million and more than 122 times the SSTC's original projected cost of $20 million. One would think that should give the taxpaying public pause.