by KYW's Tony Romeo

Governor Ed Rendell has announced that the state has received multiple bids for a long-term lease of the Pennsylvania turnpike.

At a press conference on Monday the governor said that because the bidding process continues, he couldn’t give a lot of detail and would only say the state has received “multiple bids.”

But later, he seemed to slip in response to a reporter’s question:

“Well, first of all, assume nothing other than they were -– the three -– the bids were within the ten percent threshold.”

When asked if three is the correct number of bids, the governor joked that it was “multiples of three.”

As Rendell’s comment suggests, some of the bids are within ten percent of the highest bid, meaning the remaining firms will now have until Friday to submit a “best and final offer.” Then, he expects to announce on Monday the winning bid that will be submitted to the legislature.

Rendell says the bids are probably not as good as they would have been before a dip in the country’s financial conditions -- but good enough that lawmakers should take a “good, hard look.”

But Rendell admits that his goal of having the legislature consider a turnpike lease by the end of June may not be practical:

“Most importantly, if I were a legislator, I’m not sure I would want to vote this in a vacuum. I’d want to know what happened to I-80 first.”

The governor says he will ask the feds for an expedited decision on Interstate 80 tolls.