Budget constrained or stressed governments throughout the United States are privatizing or otherwise contracting out certain non-core services and activities in order to improve efficiencies, increase revenue, and improve budgets and balance sheets. In response to this rapidly emerging trend, Gibbons assembled a leading, full-service Public-Private Partnerships (P3) Team by combining key proficiencies and the varied experience of attorneys throughout the firm’s many practice areas. Our P3 Team has significant experience creating mutually beneficial relationships between public and private entities. For example, we worked with the state of New Jersey in the creation of four separate, historic public-private partnerships. In each case, the state, which had been running operations (e.g., lottery, horse racing, and related gaming, sports, and entertainment facilities) in its role as a nonprofit/governmental entity, decided, for various reasons, to outsource certain management operations; in each case, Gibbons served as lead outside counsel to advise the state in the process and with the structure.
Generally led by our Corporate Group, P3 matters often involve other firm attorneys who concentrate in the areas of tax, public finance, government affairs, construction, litigation, real estate, employment, collective bargaining, healthcare, and environmental law, based on the given matter. For example, the firm’s Construction Law & Litigation Team assists clients in both the public and private sectors on issues arising out of the public procurement of construction and related services, including challenges by aggrieved bidders to contract awards by public entities. In these cases, our attorneys represent protesting parties, contract awardees, and public entities, handling bid protests under state and municipal public contracts and procurement laws, often through the appellate process. In other instances, our Public Finance attorneys analyze ways to address existing outstanding debt with respect to public-private partnership transactions.
Our substantial experience in public-private partnerships includes numerous projects involving many issues in such areas as, among others:
- Public finance
- Power/renewable energy finance
- Transportation (rail, waterways, and bridges)
- Private investment by New Jersey’s State Pension Fund
- Derivative securities transactions
- Racetracks and other sports and entertainment ventures
- Financing of state-supported:
- Educational facilities
- Healthcare facilities
- Housing
- State secondary education
- Utilities/water
- Tax advantaged leveraged leasing
- State lease financing (commercial real estate)
- Economic development
- Environmental/wetlands use
- Environmental/open space and farmland preservation
- Privatizations
- State-supported construction projects
- Education/universities
Our broad and deep experience enables Gibbons to assist clients through all stages of P3 projects, from negotiation and drafting of transaction agreements through successful closing. Through our many years of advising both governmental entities and private enterprises of all types with the highest caliber legal work – including sophisticated contracts and transactional arrangements in the private and governmental sectors, involving complex issues, substantial federal and state regulation, and significant dollars – we have earned a solid reputation and trust across our core practice region as a key advisor on public-private partnerships of all types.