The Michigan Economic Development Corporation has announced a ten-year, $20.6m tax break package that will keep the headquarters of Hummer in Detroit after the brand is sold to Chinese firm Sichuan Tenzhong. The Detroit News reports that Hummer will employ 100 workers at its headquarters post-sale, and plans to invest $9.4m over the next five years and hire an additional 200 employees. Negotiations between GM and Sichuan Tenzhong are ongoing. In other Hummer news, a study in the Journal of Consumer Research [via  Science Daily] seeks to understand the mentality of the now-rare Hummer driver. And it turns out that, at least in the minds of Hummer drivers, giant SUVs are patriotic.

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As Congress works on extending the authorization for transportation programs in the current session, thousands of lobbyists are investing millions in political donations and billable hours in the hopes of receiving a big payout in public dollars. The Center for Public Integrity, a left-wing watchdog group, last week released the results of an exhaustive examination of the financial ties between transportation lobbyists and lawmakers. In the first half of this year alone, 2100 lobbyists spent $45 million on influencing lawmakers who are busy dividing up an estimated $500 billion in funding (view lobbying map). “Over the past two decades, this is the way federal transportation policy has largely been made in America — by a quasi-private club of interest groups and local governments carving out something for everyone, creating a nationwide patchwork of funded bypasses, interchanges, bridges, and rail lines with no overarching philosophy behind it,” Center staff writer Matthew Lewis explained.

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The US Senate on Thursday voted to renew a prohibition on the tolling of existing freeways in the state of Texas. The measure was adopted as part of a larger $123 billion transportation appropriations bill for fiscal year 2010, which passed the House in July. ”None of the funds made available… by this act shall be used to approve or otherwise authorize the imposition of any toll on any segment of highway located on the federal-aid system in the state of Texas,” HR 3288 states. The ban is not complete. It includes exceptions for new construction, continued tolling on existing toll roads as well as the conversion of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes into High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes. Under congressional rules, funding prohibitions placed on appropriations bills must be renewed every two years. The toll road ban was last enacted in 2007.

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Here’s an excerpt from the CARS.GOV website, spotted by one our eagle-eyed readers:

Do I get any money for my trade in vehicle in addition to the CARS credit?

YES. The law requires your trade-in vehicle be destroyed. The dealer must disclose to you the scrap value of your vehicle. The dealer is entitled to keep up to $50 of the scrap value for administrative fees. You are entitled to negotiate about who keeps the remaining scrap value. For example, you may use that money toward the price of your new car separate from the CARS credit.

How many customers received this federally-mandate disclosure from their dealer? Not many, I’d wager. TTAC writer and used car guru Steve Lang reckons the average clunker was worth between $300 and $350 in scrap. So let’s call it $250 per car. Multiply that by the estimated 700,000 crushed clunkers and you’re looking at some $175,000,000 that may have been left on the table. Oops! Our tipster reckons that money should have gone back to taxpayers, anyway. I reckon he’s right.

A Member of Congress proposes to use taxpayer money to fund the development of technology to track motorists as part of a new form of taxation. US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) introduced H.R. 3311 earlier this year to appropriate $154,500,000 for research and study into the transition to a per-mile vehicle tax system. The “Road User Fee Pilot Project” would be administered by the US Treasury Department. This agency in turn would issue millions in taxpayer-backed grants to well-connected commercial manufacturers of tolling equipment to help develop the required technology. Within eighteen months of the measure’s passage, the department would file an initial report outlining the best methods for adopting the new federal transportation tax.

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The autoblogosphere is abuzz re: a recently released Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program report stating the obvious: US taxpayers can kiss their $60.5 billion-plus Chrysler and GM Debtor-in-Possession funding goodbye.

Although taxpayers may recover some portion of their investment in Chrysler and GM, it is unlikely they will recover the entire amount. The estimates of loss vary. Treasury estimates that approximately $23 billion of the initial loans made will be subject to “much lower recoveries.” Approximately $5.4 billion of the loans extended to the old Chrysler company are highly unlikely to be recovered. The Congressional Budget Office earlier calculated a subsidy rate of 73 percent for all automotive industry support under TARP and recently raised its estimate of the cost of that assistance by approximately $40 billion over the previous estimate. Because Treasury has not clearly articulated its objectives, it is impossible to know if this prospect, indeed, represents a failure of Treasury‟s strategy.

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In a desperate attempt to save lucrative photo enforcement programs in the face of widespread scandal, the Italy’s Ministry of Interior on Friday announced significant reforms to the way speed cameras and red light cameras are operated in the country. The move followed explosive allegations of corruption involving over one hundred public officials and a number of executives from the photo enforcement industry. The investigation is ongoing with police forces having conducted raids and arrests earlier this month, in June and in January. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni set out the new regulations in a directive issued to local authorities. ”The primary objective is… to plan (speed) control activities so that they represent a real tool of prevention and not merely a means to raise cash,” Maroni said in a statement. “Speed control is a police service that cannot be delegated to companies that rent equipment.”

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Motorists have been hard hit by the increase in the cost of parking in in Chicago, Illinois that began with a deal struck in February. In the central business district, for example, the cost to park for an hour doubled from $1 an hour to $2 and will quadruple to $4 an hour by 2013. Meters must also now be fed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The hikes came after Mayor Richard J. Daley (D) leased the city’s 36,000 parking meters to Morgan Stanley for 75 years in return for an up-front payment of $1.15 billion. The Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO), a liberal government reform group, fought back last Wednesday by filing a lawsuit hoping a judge would find the parking meter contract unlawful.

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The Arlington County Board on Wednesday [above] filed suit against the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) over the High Occupancy Toll (HOT) Lanes project proposed for Interstates 95 and 395. The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has been determined to sell the existing High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) ride-sharing lanes to an Australian company in return for an up-front payment. Arlington officials claimed that in the rush to ram the project through the system, state and federal officials bypassed environmental laws. ”I wish it did not have to come to this, but the County was left with no alternative,” Board Chairman Barbara A. Favola said in a statement. “We are encouraged that VDOT has elected to delay the project.”

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Just got off the blower with Rae Tyson, stalwart spokesman for the Department of Transportation’s Cash for Clunkers (a.k.a. C.A.R.S.) program. Although Tyson doesn’t have the exact stats, he revealed that the agency has rejected “significantly more” than 25 percent of dealer submissions for government reimbursement. “The bottleneck is regrettable,” Rae said. “But the number represents safeguards against fraud.” The clock is ticking. As of this morning, US car dealers have submitted paperwork to the C4C program for 390,283 vehicles. That represents $1.63 billion from the $3 billion total. Minus the $50 million processing fee. So there’s $1.34 billion and change left in the kitty. [Top ten reasons for C.A.R.S. rejection after the jump.] Meanwhile, NADA spokesman Chuck Cyrill says, “a lot of dealers are pulling out of the program.” Cyrill contends that cash flow problems caused by paperwork issues are causing dealers to “limit their exposure.” The remedy is the experience. “To address dealer concerns with a backlog of reimbursement claims, DOT has informed NADA that it will commit to deploy an additional 1,000 employees to speed up its processing efforts.”

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