New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Can’t follow toll logic with a GPS
To the peasants who had no bread during the great famine in France, Queen Marie Antoinette proclaimed, “Let Them Eat Cake!” And to Connecticut’s struggling working middle class, an equally out of touch Gov. Ned. Lamont boldly states, “Let’s Tax Them Again!”
After spending a mere 38 days in office surveying Connecticut’s crumbling roads and bridges, Gov. Lamont flipped on the single most fundamental promise of his entire campaign and decided to impose tolls on all drivers in Connecticut.
With a Democratic governor and overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, passing a toll bill should have been easy. But thanks to strong resistance from grass roots organizations such as notollsct.org and residents across the state, the votes still aren’t there. Pro toll legislators have reacted by changing key elements of the bill almost daily, desperate to get anything at all passed to save face.
The number of gantries has ranged from 50 to more than 100. One day the Merritt Parkway is tolled, the next day it’s not. There have even been discussions of having one “free gantry,” although no one is quite sure what that means.
It got so bad last week that Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz finally admitted the obvious. He instructed his own committee to be “intentionally vague” on a tolling bill that Gov. Lamont now promises will define his entire governorship.
But two things have not changed. First, the amount of money Connecticut families are being asked to pay for tolls remains a whopping $800 million, on average $1,000 per person every year. Second, tolls will fall flatly on the back of the people who can least afford to pay them — the working middle class of Connecticut
To soften the blow, Gov. Lamont has tried to paint tolls as a “user fee,” only applicable to those who decide to use the roads. Should we really have to pay a user fee for everyday tasks such as commuting to work, going shopping or to church, or attending a child’s ballgame? Or should safe roads and bridges be part of basic government services covered by the excessive state taxes we already pay?
Just this week, a study by the University of Chicago showed that half of Americans are only one paycheck away from financial hardship. When a struggling family can’t pay their utility bill, the heat, electricity, cable TV and phones are turned off. If a family falls behind on mortgage payments or rent, homelessness becomes a real possibility. So what happens to the single working mom in Ansonia who can’t afford to pay her monthly toll utility bill? You guessed it, she loses her car registration.
This past Monday, I was honored to be joined on the New Haven Green by faith leaders representing cities throughout Connecticut. They increasingly see parishioners leaving their families and the church they love because they simply can’t afford to live in Connecticut any longer. Each expressed concern about the impact that yet another tax in the form of tolls will have on their parishioners.
One pastor said “Poor people in this state will suffer the most. Tolls will represent another month’s rent. How will they come up with that money?”
The families that these faith leaders represent are not “intentionally vague” when it comes to spending their own money. They find a way to live within their means every day. All they are asking is that our government at least try to do the same, before asking for even more from them.
Opponents say that it is too hard to cut costs. They claim that Connecticut state government is already as efficient as it can possibly be. But no one really believes this. Just look to this legislative session where government lawyers already making more than $100,000 per year were given 11-percent raises. And we ask the working people of Connecticut to pay another $5 per day in tolls to fund it?
Cost cutting is hard. But it is no harder than spending the next six years trying to secure federal approval for tolls, completing study after study, borrowing money to build gantries, negotiating reciprocity agreements with neighboring states, and setting up an “independent body” at a cost of tens of millions of dollars to administer a new tolling program. And immediate cuts to discretionary spending could be diverted to fix our infrastructure now rather than waiting six years for tolls.
The good news for Connecticut residents is that the toll bill is in trouble. And if we continue attending peaceful rallies, calling our state representatives and being vocal, we can finish it off. In yet another astonishing admission this week, Gov. Lamont promised to help raise money for the re-election campaigns of legislators, but only if they are willing to vote for tolls. Is he offering jobs and judgeships as well? This statement alone could doom the toll bill.
How does any Democratic legislator who hopes to be re-elected vote for the toll bill now? Unfortunately, money matters in politics. And many voters will certainly accuse pro-toll legislators of being more interested in getting the money to be re-elected than in representing the voters in their districts who overwhelmingly oppose tolls.
Perhaps Pastor Jim Townsley from Central Baptist Church in Southington summed it up best, “The solution is not to take more of our money, but use better what you already have. Allow us to have the freedom to stay in Connecticut.”
Democratic legislators should listen to grassroots faith leaders from towns across Connecticut and the hundred thousand residents who signed a petition against tolls, not the advice of Marie Antoinette or Ned Lamont — and certainly not the promise of a political payoff for selling out voters. does an Internet search of the Dude’s name. Nothing untoward comes up. She gets involved with the Dude and yep, she eventually gets smacked around too.
Only this time, she fights back and Dude gets a bloody lip. When the cops show, he claims assault, too. Both of them get arrested (about 7 percent of domestic assaults result in dual arrests) and neither name gets released. Two years later . ... Yeah, there’s a pattern here, but because Dude escapes whatever public shaming might be available by printing police stories in the newspaper and online for posterity, he gets to continue his life as an assailant.
The domestic abuse bill is aimed at protecting the identity of victims, of course. As someone who needs public information, however, I think it’s a horrible idea and yet another example of what is often called legislative creep.
The road to secret arrests is paved with reduced transparency, and I’m hoping this bill disappears without a peep in the House, because the names of domestic abusers should be written in the sky.
Fortunately, Colleen Murphy, executive director of the state Freedom of Information Commission, is worried that the way the bill is written, even couples without the same last name could become anonymous, because the legislation includes a line about “other identifying information” that could lead to more cases of withheld names.
“We shouldn’t allow those arrested to hide, even if the goal is to protect the victim,” Murphy said.
But this is a legislature that claims it’s all for transparency. But it votes for the opaque. For years, the state librarian and researchers at Central Connecticut State University have been trying to access the 100-year-old medical records of Connecticut’s Civil War veterans.
In those records could be the keys to treating post traumatic stress exhibited by long-dead soldiers. But lawyers from the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services do their annual pious song-and-dance to the Government Administration & Elections Committee about the privacy of families and their forbearers from six generations back, and the bill never makes it out of committee.
Forget modern science and graduate students who are interested not in names but in reports on mental health from the latter part of the 19th Century. It’s the bureaucrats who are important. I have witnessed a DMHAS lawyer cry, on cue, for the GAE Committee, in defense of this fabricated sanctity.
Yes, “open government” can sometimes be a
As someone who needs public information, however, I think it’s a horrible idea and yet another example of what is often called legislative creep.
farce.
In another area Secretary of the State Denise Merrill wants to strip birth dates from people’s election records. That bill’s heading to the Appropriations Committee, where I hope it dies without a ripple on the pond. But Murphy’s concerned that pieces will likely be tacked on to another bill. “We are hoping to get some compromise language put in to lessen the amount withheld,” Murphy said.
Another bill, which according to General Assembly records died on the vine in the Judiciary Committee, could also be revived in the waning days leading to the June 5 adjournment.
This one is the soreloser attempt to close the door after The Hartford Courant’s successful attempt to obtain the records and other evidence of the twisted Sandy Hook murderer. The bill would keep papers and other documents away from the public, because ... because ... Well, really no reason except the cops and the criminal justice types don’t want the public that pays their salaries to have access to evidence they paid for.
So yes, we must be vigilant.