Time for change
There’s an old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Of course, the flip side of that axiom is the simple truth that if it is broke, you need to fix it.
Well, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is broken. Few would argue that assertion following a grand jury announcement of charges against several Turnpike commissioners for their role in an alleged pay-to-play scheme that misused millions of taxpayer dollars.
And it’s high time to fix it, which is exactly what House Bill 1197 will do. The bill, introduced by Rep. Donna Oberlander, R-Clarion, would abolish the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and turn control of the state’s toll roads over to PennDOT.
This is long overdue; in fact, a similar bill stalled in 2009. It’s not hard to imagine, however, that these latest charges of corruption at the top of the Turnpike Commission will sway a few minds this time around.
The bill would turn over all toll collection, maintenance and operational roles to PennDOT, which would be required by the law to honor all collective bargaining agreements and union contracts in place with the commission. The state would also take on the Turnpike’s roughly $7 billion in debt.
But at its heart, this bill is about simple efficiencies. According to Oberlander, PennDOT manages more than 41,000 miles of road with seven executives; the Turnpike Commission has nine executives to oversee 545 miles of road.
Looking at it another way, that’s more than 5,800 miles of road for each PennDOT executive and 60.5 miles for every Turnpike Commissioner.
The whole thing would be laughable if we weren’t footing the bill. According to estimates from the 2009 bill, removing the commission and turning over the Turnpike to PennDOT would save taxpayers $300-450 million per year.
Of course, the cost we’re incurring is only compounded by the grand jury probe into corruption at the Turnpike Commission. The panel found the commission issuing no-bid contracts, steering work to politically connected vendors of dubious qualifications, squeezing legitimate contractors for campaign cash, hiring political hacks, paying for phantom work, and persecuting whistleblowers.
Of course none of this was new to anyone playing attention to politics in Harrisburg. The state Senate has controlled the Turnpike Commission for years and all the patronage and perks that that comes with it.
It was a bipartisan practice too with the party in power getting 60 percent of the booty and the out-party getting 40 percent, according to the grand jury.
In a dictionary of political corruption, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission might well be listed as the prime example under “pay-to-play.”
And it’s not just a case of a few wayward pols succumbing to temptation. As scandals over the years have shown, the temptation at the Turnpike Commission is simply too great.
We applaud Oberlander and other lawmakers for taking this necessary step to remove the temptation and the bloated, redundancy that is the Turnpike Commission and turn control of all the state’s roads to PennDOT.
If the state legislature is serious at all about getting to the root of this problem, then the Turnpike Commission must be abolished. If not, then it will be business as usual at the Turnpike Commission until the next scandal hits. It’s not a matter of if it will happen. It’s just a question of when it will happen.