Lamont miscues taking their toll
On the issue of tolls, Gov. Ned Lamont has shown a stunning lack of leadership. He hasn’t just made mistakes, he’s made nothing but unforced errors. His fecklessness has been so complete that it will — and should — give citizens pause about anything he says or does.
First, he went back on a campaign promise. He ran on a trucks-only tolls proposal. It was implausible, so he was challenged repeatedly. He asserted that he’d get necessary federal approval and raise enough revenue just on trucks to meet the state’s future transportation needs. He dismissed constant questions about his plan’s legality, despite a fierce legal challenge to the nation’s first trucks-only tolls regime in neighboring Rhode Island — a “system” of two toll gantries.
Then, in his inaugural address, he took a coward’s way out by announcing that he would send the General Assembly two proposals, his trucks-only campaign plan and an all-vehicles plan which, after study, he now favored. Evidently, Lamont believes that the buck stops on the desks of 187 legislators.
Well, the trucks-only version just faded away. In late February, Lamont sent an all-vehicles tolls bill to the General Assembly. It reflected precious little study. It was a mere eight pages long. It wasn’t a plan at all. The governor plopped the entire undertaking into the lap of the Department of Transportation, which was mandated to design, fund and operate the system.
At the same time, he released his budget, in which he announced that the Special Transportation Fund was going bankrupt much sooner than expected, and asserted that tolls were the only way to rescue it. Yes, the STF was going broke, but only because Lamont was bankrupting it. His budget proposed to divert $1.2 billion in car sales tax revenue that his predecessor and fellow Democrat, Dannel Malloy, had committed to the STF. For those who remember the Vietnam War, it was reminiscent of what was said about the city of Ben Tre after the Tet Offensive: “We had to destroy it in order to save it.”
Then, a closer look at the budget revealed that, under Lamont’s plan, the STF would go bankrupt in 2022, while no meaningful toll revenue would arrive before 2024. So, apparently, the DOT was supposed to close down and hang out a “gone fishin’ ” sign for the intervening two years.
Lamont forged ahead with his commitment to tolls nevertheless. He asserted that tolls are the solution, proposing that the state borrow against future toll revenue to fill the gap. Well, yes, states and municipalities issue revenue bonds that are repaid from future income — future income from revenue streams. It is an unconventional idea indeed to borrow against future income from a
revenue stream.
The further problem is that there isn’t a plan, and there may never be, or, at best, there won’t be for an indefinite period of time. Why? Because Lamont is planning to install statewide tolls under a special Federal Highway Administration pilot program exclusively available for toll systems which employ congestion pricing. Connecticut must apply to the FHA to qualify for the program. There is no given timetable for, nor any guarantee of, approval, especially since the eastern sections of I-84 and I-95 and the northern stretches of I-91 are seldom congested.
Given the importance of FHA approval, Lamont scurried to Washington recently to pay a visit on U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao. He emerged to say the meeting went swimmingly. He said Chao spoke about a developing bipartisan consensus in Washington for a major federal infrastructure bill to provide federal funding to cover 80 percent of transportation and other infrastructure projects.
Mighty good news. So good, in fact, that it would eliminate the need for tolls, because 80 percent funding would far exceed the approximately 50 percent federal funding that Connecticut and other no-tolls states receive currently.
Lamont’s serial miscues and ongoing mismanagement have dimmed the outlook for passage of a tolls bill considerably, despite Democrats having 60-percent-plus majorities in both houses of the Assembly.
Nothing here has been said about the ferocious public opposition to tolls that has developed nor about Republicans’ competing plan for transportation improvements, its “Prioritize Progress” proposal.
Everything here has been about Lamont’s deficient leadership and his reliance upon good intentions rather than solid plans. We all know how the road to you-knowwhere is paved. Not only has Lamont left Connecticut’s roads to be paved that way, but he has left them to be tolled that way as well.
Nothing here has been said about the ferocious public opposition to tolls that has developed nor about Republicans’ competing plan for transportation improvements, its “Prioritize Progress” proposal.