Truck-Only Toll Would Depend On How Many Wheels You Have In CT

HARTFORD, CT — Truck-only tolls are a step closer to reality in Connecticut after Democratic leaders of the House and Senate announced a tentative consensus.

House Democratic leadership is planning a special session to vote on truck-only tolls sometime between mid and late January. Gov. Ned Lamont met with the House and Senate Democratic caucuses Tuesday. The plan calls for $19 billion in spending over 10 years.

“Over the coming days, I look forward to continuing these discussions so we can adopt a plan to finally fix our transportation system and get our state’s economy moving again, in short order,” Lamont said in a statement.

Some details of the plan needs to be negotiated between the state House and Senate Democratic caucuses, but House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz said he is confident they will come to a solution. He doesn’t anticipate any 2020 election backlash for those who vote in favor of the plan.

“Now we will be tackling the transportation issue that has been plaguing the state for 20 years,” Aresimowicz said.

A draft of the bill hasn’t been formulated yet, but the basic plan calls for tolling on heavy trucks only, said Rep. Roland Lemar, chair of the transportation committee. The plan would bring in an estimated $150 to $175 million in gross revenue annually and place tolls gantries at 12 bridges. Some legislators had brought up concerns that trucks primarily used for local deliveries like box trucks would be subject to tolls and changes were made to avoid that.

Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney said there is a contingent of 18 members of his caucus who aren’t opposed to truck-only tolls on bridges, but that several issues need to be addressed, according to the CT Mirror. The 18 votes combined with a tie-breaking vote from Lt. Gov Susan Bysiewicz would be enough to win approval in the Senate.

The issue of tolling has been a whirlwind of proposals over more than a year. Gov. Ned Lamont campaigned on truck-only tolling, but then switched to a plan that called for tolls on cars and trucks. His reasoning was that truck-only tolls could face some legal challenges and that it wouldn't bring in enough revenue to solve the state’s transportation woes. A few different iterations of tolls on all vehicles didn’t gather enough legislative support for action.

Republican leadership in the House and Senate criticized the new plan and remained against any plan that included tolls.

“We are still strongly opposed to tolls for all the reasons we have given before,” said House Republican leader Themis Klarides.

Senate Republican leader Len Fasano said many questions remain since there is no draft of the bill yet. He also said he wanted to see the math behind the revenue projections and the toll rates.

Fasano and Senate Republicans pitched a plan last year that would take $1.5 billion of the $2.5 billion in the state’s rainy day fund and use it to pay down Connecticut’s pension obligations. The plan would free up money in the state budget to be used for transportation purposes. Money in the fund earns around 2 percent interest and it would earn closer to a 6.9 percent return on investment if put in the state’s pension fund, Fasano said.

Connecticut’s rainy day fund is at an all-time high. The previous record was $1.4 billion in 2008, according to the CT Mirror.

“Paying down debt is not a bad way of going about solving your fiscal problems in the state of Connecticut,” Fasano said Tuesday, adding that the fund would regenerate to $1.7 billion at the end of the current fiscal year and $2 billion by the end of the next fiscal year under current financial projections.

Democrats reiterated their distaste for Fasano’s plan.

“What happens when the rainy day fund is drained… it’s not if a recession comes but rather when… are you then going to defund public education are you going to defund higher education, are you going to defund senior services, ” Aresimowicz said.

House Majority Leader Matt Ritter said that House Republicans haven’t offered a concrete plan to solve Connecticut’s transportation funding issues and while Senate Republicans worked hard on their plan, it would leave the state vulnerable when a recession hits.

Both Republican and Democratic plans also rely on low-interest federal loans meant for transportation improvement projects.