Dan Haar: Why Lamont’s toll plan died despite a clear need

Gov. Ned Lamont presented his updated transportation plan at the offices of reSET, a business incubator in Hartford, on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019. At center is Hilary Gunn, an anti-tolls protester from Greenwich and at right is Sal Luciano, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, a tolls supporter. less Gov. Ned Lamont presented his updated transportation plan at the offices of reSET, a business incubator in Hartford, on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019. At center is Hilary Gunn, an anti-tolls protester from Greenwich ... more Photo: Dan Haar/Hearst Connecticut Media Photo: Dan Haar/Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Dan Haar: Why Lamont’s toll plan died despite a clear need 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

It hasn’t even been a week since Gov. Ned Lamont rolled out the second version of his most ambitious idea. And yet it’s already basically dead. The chance of any plan that includes tolls passing in the next year seems slim.

The reasons say a lot about why Connecticut remains stuck in the 20th century.

By just about any measure, this is — can we say was? — a modest tolling plan with $320 million in highway tolls, just over one-third from out-of-state vehicles. It’s less than half of Lamont’s first proposal.

Massachusetts collects about $400 million on its one tolled road, the Mass Pike, which we all help pay when we drive to Boston. New Jersey rings up a colossal $1.6 billion a year on the infamous New Jersey Turnpike ($1.2 billion) and the Garden State Parkway.

No East Coast state other than Connecticut balances its budget without tolls. Most big employers favor the highway charges.

So what’s the problem?

“I think it’s overall a pretty good plan,” one lawmaker, obviously a Democrat, said this week. But he added, “I would bet that it does not go forward.”

That seemed clear after Senate Democrats met with Lamont behnd closed doors. Wednesday. No one would come out and say tolls are dead but that’s the upshot. Lamont agreed to retool his plan quickly.

“What he indicated was a willingness to look at something that relies on other sources of revenue,” said a senator who was not an opponent of tolls previously but “will not support this current proposal.”

Timing is part of the issue. Lamont might have had a shot if last spring he had pitched this plan rather than the full Monte of linear tolling on the state’s four busiest highways. If there ever was a chance of tolls passing, it had to happen in this calendar year.

There’s no way a tolls vote happens in an election year, especially since we all know a vote on tolls would come in May at the earliest, after legislators start ringing their district doorbells.

Political skill and muscle is part of the picture. Until Wednesday, Lamont never tried to sell his plan directly to legislators as a group. However he pitched it, he should never have agreed to both the $15 minimum wage and the paid family and medical leave act without promises of support for tolls from key Democrats who wanted those reforms — I’m thinking of Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, and Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Killingly.

I agree it’s unpalatable that Lamont would jeopardize reforms he favored in order to win the tolls battle. But that’s how the Capitol works and he might have won all of it.

169 Connecticuts

A fractured state is also part of the picture. Lamont had trouble lining up support when the plan was theoretical, and spread all over the state. Now that we have 14 actual, proposed gantry locations, lawmakers in targeted districts, or whose constituents travel there, will have a even harder time voting yes.

Take Sen. James Maroney, D-Milford. He’s never been a big fan of tolls but if a vote were to happen, he might support it. Unfortunately, one of the proposed tolls lurks on I-95 just a few hundred yards from his district, meaning anyone from Milford or West Haven who travels to New Haven will pay at least 80 cents for a round trip. Unlike urban lawmakers, he’s in nothing resembling a safe seat so that has to color his view.

Tellingly, after Lamont said he’d hold town hall meetings around the state, Patrick Sasser, founder of No Tolls CT, tweeted, “I hope @GovNedLamont is ready to hold a town hall at all 169 towns in CT. We all want to look him in the eye as he presents his plan.”

Bridgeport and surrounding towns escape in this plan. And in a state fractured by town and regional lines, that seems unfair. Tolling whole highways with lots of gantries at lower prices would be fairer but opponents spread the word that more gantries means higher tolls.

Speaking of fairness, anti-toll Democrats such as Kushner and Rep. Bob Godfrey, both of Danbury, correctly say tolls hurt the poor disproportionately. They suggest raising taxes on the rich to pay for what the state needs. That’s a debatable strategy but it isn’t politically viable.

Deep culture

Timing, fariness and fractured politics are all part of the problem but the issue runs deeper.

What’s the deal with the permanent state of rigor mortis on policy in this state? Property tax reform, marijuana legalization, electoral reform, gaming strategy, alcoholic beverage pricing, health insurance options — all of it stagnates year after year with little change while other states make progress.

Maybe it’s in our culture. What do we do in Connecticut? We make defense equipment; we insure lives, health and property; we run companies; we deliver medical care; and we manage money. All of those pursuits have one thing in common: Risk management, often outright aversion to risk.

No surprise we can’t elect lawmakers who enact major changes.

Tolls represent a particularly frustrating standoff. Yes, we have a profound political divide on spending vs. tax increases but lots of states have that and they manage to get by. Making the divide worse is Connecticut’s more unusual trust gap, as governors and General Assemblies have been forced to deploy budget tricks because we didn’t fund pensions correctly years ago.

Now skeptics don’t believe the toll money will go toward highway upgrades because, they say, we’ve robbed too much from the transportation fund to pay for general government and pensions. Truth is, far more has gone the other way, toward transportation, but facts are not part of this debate.

So now we’re paying for the sins of the past, foisting idiocy on the future by not enacting tolls in the present.

At least four Democrats in the Senate might be inclined to vote for tolls, making a victory for Lamont more likely, but they’re in closely contested districts. That means the leadership doesn’t want to expose them to a tolls vote, and if there were a vote, they might oppose tolls.

If any of them were to decide not to seek re-election — it’s two men and two women — they’d probably vote for this modest tolls plan.

The financial case for tolls

There simply is no logical financial argument not to install tolls.

We spend $1.5 billion a year fixing and occasionally upgrading roads and highways. Half comes from the federal government and half we borrow, paying the debt with a combination of gasoline taxes, oil company taxes, car and truck sales taxes and assorted fees.

We need to spend at least $300 million a year more if we want to eliminate a dozen or so choke points in the system, and if we want to boost train travel — and there’s noplace other than tolls to find more money.

And even if we don’t spend more than $1.5 billion, the state’s transportation debt will rise by at least $300 million a year over the next four years, to about $1 billion.

Republicans say cut costs and use the savings to upgrade highways. They’re right, we should find ways to known diwn these crazy prices. But even if we cut $300 million a year — a stretch — we’d still need to come up with between $800 million and $1 billion a year, compared with $700 million we’re now spending.

Four options: Transfer more money from the general fund, which we’re already doing. Raise taxes, which obviously can’t happen. Borrow more money, which digs the hole deeper. Or increase user fees.

Within that last category, certainly we could jack up the price of a driver’s license and vehicle registration, along with gas taxes. It would have to total an extra $150 per driver per year, maybe more, to yield $300 million and that’s a tough nut.

That leaves tolls, which raise at least $275 million in Lamont’s plan, after costs — of which only $200 million comes from us in Connecticut. Borrowing, by contrast, would cost us an average of at least $400 million to have access to that same $275 million, due to interest — though we could spread the cost over many decades.

Logic and pork

Republicans say borrow less for other things and use the current borrowing capacity to pay for transportation. Well, Lamont is already borrowing the bare minimum. He thinks we need that “debt diet” to reduce future payments. And while he’s right, his principled stand is hurting his ability to buy votes with pork-barrel politics.

Lamont says we need tolls as a “dedicated revenue source” to borrow under a federal program that lends highway money at about the interest rate of the 10-year Treasury yield plus a few basis points. Opponents say there are other dedicated sources and anyway, they say correctly, the state won’t be able to borrow as much as Lamont suggests under that program.

That whole argument is a red herring. That federal program would save maybe $20 million a year for Connecticut. With or without it, the math is the same. The issue isn’t finding a dedicated revenue source, it’s finding revenue — even if we cut costs.

All of that is logic. The real problem is Connecticut’s risk-averse, change-averse culture, and our fractured, town-centered politics, all of which defines life at the Capitol.

Logic was not Lamont’s only weapon. As one lawmaker asked, that 5 percent of toll revenue Lamont wants to give host towns is negotiable, right? Oh yes, it certainly is. Debt diet be damned, Lamont might have broken out the old pork-barrel in Hartford.

With enough pork, maybe it’s not too late.

dhaar@hearstmediact.com