7 little lies about tolls
Though not a stereotypical wedge issue, Democrats’ proposal for highway tolling in Connecticut has aroused the passions of our typically temperate electorate. The best explanation for the people’s discontent is not only disagreement over substance, but a sense of betrayal by the political class. Voters can tell they are being lied to with abandon.
Despite the electorate’s opposition to tolls, Gov. Ned Lamont and House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz want to push on for passage during a special legislative session. It is worth recounting seven lies in defense of tolls and their relation to The Big Lie about state government.
First, Lamont promised voters during his campaign to toll trucks only, which helped him defeat Bob Stefanowski in a close race. He broke that promise not two months after inauguration.
Second, proponents of tolls claim they are a mere “user fee” motorists should suddenly be expected to pay — as if they are not currently paying for their roads in spades. The state already levies six different classes of taxes and fees for transportation, totaling nearly $2 billion annually.
The third lie, particularly audacious, is that significant existing costs cannot be cut from the Special Transportation Fund (STF). Surprising, given that Connecticut has the highest administrative cost per mile on its highways of any state and the sixthhighest total cost per mile, according to the Reason Foundation. The latter is 180 percent higher than the average state’s cost. When I raised the data points recently to Rep. Laura Devlin, ranking member on the Transportation Committee, she said she asked the Department of Transportation about the same and it provided only a curt rejoinder that the study compares “apples and oranges.” No explanation how so. No explanation for even a portion of the orderofmagnitude difference in the cost.
The fourth lie is that there is a deluge of future projects in dire need of financing — or else crisis will ensue. What, you may ask, are those projects and their cost, and how will they balance with tolling revenue? Toll proponents have not led with a detailed accounting. However, the DOT delivered a menu of its desired future projects based on an early version of Lamont’s infrastructure plans to the Yankee Institute. The $25 billion list, only 11 percent of which is designated for lower Fairfield County, reads more like spending invented to justify revenue rather than the other way around. Few of the projects are actually necessary, and many are several times more expensive than similar ones around the United States and Europe, as Manhattan Institute infrastructure ana
So why go through the trouble to pass a bill that requires so much deception and that the people oppose?
lyst Connor Harris recently documented in the Connecticut Post.
Fifth, Democrats insist tolls are fiscally responsible, bemoaning Republicans’ infrastructure proposal to prioritize infrastructure projects under existing bonding capacity. Lamont complains the Republican plan would burden the next generation with debt. But Democrats passed a budget that shifts billions in liabilities from the Teachers’ Retirement System onto the next generation. The measure reduces nearterm payments by $9 billion to increase them by a shocking $27 billion in the out years, belying their complaints about debt.
The sixth myth is that the campaign for tolls is above board and premised on the merits. Proponents of tolls are spending $900,000 on a marketing campaign to convince the public of those merits. Who are these wellfunded fans of tolls, you ask? A group of construction companies and labor unions just looking out for the public interest. But they have to date not convinced the public, so the governor is trying to persuade legislators by other means. In May, he told openly told House Democrats that if they vote for tolls, big business and big labor will fund their reelection campaigns. On top of that, new train stations in several districts are being floated as a price for their representatives supporting tolls. It’s corruption in plain sight.
Seventh, and finally, Democrats insist tolling revenue is exclusively for the purpose of transportation needs and that no existing funding for the STF will be diverted to the General Fund (GF). Here’s how long that promise lasted: June. The new budget passed by Democrats diverts $175 million of existing transportation revenue to the GF. No shame. Only tricks.
So why go through the trouble to pass a bill that requires so much deception and that the people oppose? The last two lies suggest the answer: Tolls are not about the transportation needs of Connecticut. Tolls are a necessary revenue stream to satisfy the yawning deficit in the GF — caused by the $100 billion unfunded liability for lavish government employee benefits — and the appetite of the special interests for more bloated projects. If passed, some existing STF revenue will be diverted to the GF and some left to finance said projects.
In that way, the lies about tolls are simply in service of The Big Lie that permeates all of Connecticut state government: That the Democratic Party allows nothing to happen in Hartford that would ever do harm to the special interests and union bosses who patronize them. Until that corrupt bargain is altered, our great state stands no chance of revitalization and future success.