Toll road funding sealed transit deal
HARRISBURG – The transportation funding package the state House of Representatives passed on Tuesday will give Fayette County nearly $612,000 for repairing bridges and almost $476,000 for mass transit. But a promise from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission that $450 million will be on the way to finish an eight-mile stretch of Mon/Fayette Expressway clinched area lawmakers’ support for the funding package.
Gov. Ed Rendell has scheduled ceremonial bill signings today in Altoona and Philadelphia to tout the legislation, which would spend an average of $900 million per year on mass transit and on fixing faltering highways and bridges.
House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, a Greene County Democrat whose district includes parts of Fayette, said he probably would have withheld support for the transportation spending bill without the Mon-Fayette commitment.
Although mass transit will get $300 million and roads and bridges will get $450 million this year, DeWeese said most of the money bypasses rural areas.
“This is a proposal worthy of concurrence (with the Senate), but just barely in my view,” DeWeese said.
Knowing that Rendell desperately wanted to help mass transit agencies in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, DeWeese and other southwestern lawmakers looked to make a deal.
“It was a pre-eminent opportunity for an aggressive and bare-knuckled negotiation,” DeWeese said.
Weeks of quiet negotiations resulted in a pledge from Joseph G. Brimmeier, turnpike commission chief executive officer.
Brimmeier said if southwestern lawmakers voted for the transportation package, the commission would scrape together about $450 million left over from other construction projects to finish the Uniontown to Brownsville connector on the Mon/Fayette.
Completing that section would provide about 60 miles of continuous highway from Route 68 in West Virginia to Jefferson Hills at Route 51.
DeWeese and the other lawmakers made good on their end of the bargain, helping the House pass the transportation funding package by a 124 to 79 vote just after 4 p.m Tuesday.
Brimmeier sent a letter to DeWeese earlier Tuesday confirming that a press conference soon will be held to formally announce construction plans for the unfinished highway.
“I am convinced that Mr. Brimmeier and his team will be forthcoming with an announcement in the immediate future, and dirt will be flying on the Uniontown to Brownsville connector in the ensuing months,” DeWeese said.
Rep. Peter J. Daley, a Washington County Democrat whose district includes parts of Fayette, said he was glad to see funding for a project started in the early 1970s while Milton Schapp was governor.
“I think the delegation stuck together really well,” Daley said. “This is a half billion dollars, and we stuck together on it.”
DeWeese did not get everything he wanted in the transportation package.
The state Senate stripped a provision from the legislation that would have added two members to the five-member turnpike commission. House leaders would have appointed the two new members.
DeWeese said giving House members two appointees would have improved oversight of the commission, which will now be in charge of the turnpike and Interstate 80.
“The oversight is, of course, scalding in its scarcity, and the opportunities for mischief are incalculable,” DeWeese said. “We feel if you are going to spend $13 billion over the next several decades, then the House of Representatives should have some modest inclusion. It should not be entirely a Senate prerogative.”
Others were unhappy with the transportation package.
The Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg-based conservative think tank, criticized the plan to raise turnpike tolls 25 percent increase in 2009 and the addition of tolls on Interstate 80 starting in 2010.
The turnpike toll hikes and new tolls on I-80 will help the turnpike commission repay the roughly $5 billion it plans to borrow to pay for the transportation package.
Matthew J. Brouillette, Commonwealth Foundation president, said using toll revenues for mass transit agencies in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh represents a significant tax increase on commuters on the turnpike and I-80.
“Taxing turnpike and I-80 users to pay for SEPTA and PAT operational inefficiencies is only throwing good money after bad,” Brouillette said.
Kori Walter can be reached at 717-705-6330 or kwalter@phillyburbs.com.