Photo by Angela Rowlings (file)

Three weeks from today, the tolls go up. Maybe it’s not too late to stop this rip-off.

Everybody’s obsessed with Deval Patrick’s proposed 19-cent gas tax increase, and rightly so. But some pol could make a name for himself trying to halt Deval’s other outrageous highway robbery – the two-step toll increases that start kicking in March 29.

Why doesn’t some ambitious solon file a bill to halt the toll hikes until, say, July 1, so we can see how Deval’s “transportation reforms” are coming along? Oh sure, most reps will throw up their hands and say they can’t do anything, that the hikes are a fait accompli, the Pike has to worry about its bond rating, etc., etc.

So what? Don’t we have a “rainy day” fund? Use some of that to tide the Pike hacks over until July. Impose a “stealing freeze” on the sticky-fingered toll-takers.

You pols say the Pike is a “quasi-independent authority.” But that didn’t stop you from packing the board with new members to protect the bloated idiot state senator who got the Pike into this jam that supposedly requires higher tolls.

I know, it’s St. Patrick’s Month. Yes, you’ll need to hold hearings. Will Speaker DeLeo deep-six the bill? Don’t forget (even if he has) that he represents Winthrop, Ground Zero of this latest Deval campaign against working people. Maybe the hacks will appease DeLeo by cutting Winthrop in on the toll-discount program, but $5 and then $7 tunnel tolls are not going to help property values there.

You say Deval will veto the bill? Let him. Did you get a load of his latest poll numbers? If they go any lower they’ll be calling him “W.” His credibility is zero. Increasingly he surrounds himself with poster boys for the hackerama, like his new fork-tongued frontman, the ever-loathsome Jim Aloisi.

In public, in Boston and Springfield, Aloisi talks up reform. “We need to have reform,” he said in Springfield. In Boston it was, “We are committed to reform.”

Then, behind closed doors, with the legislators, the career coatholder brushes it all off by saying “Reform is a meaningless slogan.”

It is, when Deval is in charge of it. Look at the marvelous savings he’s already realized from his vaunted civilian flagmen reform: $12,500. Wow! Next, Aloisi says they’re going to “abolish” the Turnpike Authority. The truth is, the only change will be the name above the tollbooths – “Mass Highway” instead of “Mass Pike.”

Together we con.

Deval is still talking about rescinding the toll increases if . . . if the Legislature cuts its own throat by voting him the highest gas tax in the United States. Now he hints maybe he’d be willing to phase in the gas tax increase, the way New Hampshire is going to do it.

The only difference is, New Hampshire has a three-year phase-in. Deval is thinking more in terms of three weeks. Please, some rep out there, file a bill to stop the increases. Put a rocket in Deval’s pocket. Think of the headlines you’d get. He might even fly back from Jamaica – nah, probably not. Deval’s been called a lot of things, but never a workaholic.

Three weeks and counting. Tick . . . tick . . . tick.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1156988

Unfair burden for region, many at hearing contend

Transportation Secretary James A. Aloisi Jr. responded to addressed the panel of state legislators at the first of four state hearings a Springfield hearing on increasing the gas tax. (Michele McDonald/Globe Staff)

“Let me be clear, there isn’t going to be a gas tax increase as high as 19 cents,” said Representative Joseph F. Wagner, a Chicopee Democrat who leads the House on transportation issues.

Wagner had not previously taken such a firm stance, though he also predicted last night that the Legislature would eventually reach consensus with Patrick. Wagner said in an interview that he spoke out against the 19 cents after canvassing fellow House members and not seeing the support. He did not provide an alternate number, but said he expected the final bill to rely on a combination of sources to meet the state’s estimated $20 billion in transportation needs over the next 20 years. A 19-cent hike would raise the state’s gas tax to 42.5 cents a gallon.

The hundreds of people gathered in the Springfield Technical Community College auditorium applauded loudly at statements alluding to an unfair burden that Western Massachusetts would bear with a higher gas tax. Some residents spoke in favor of raising the gas tax to fix the state’s transportation problems, but the opposition was particularly critical that money would go toward avoiding fare hikes on the MBTA and paying off Big Dig debt.

Patrick and his transportation secretary, James A. Aloisi Jr., have been touring the state in hopes of building support for their plan. The regional flavor of Patrick’s comments, and the nod to the tough economic times, underscore the challenges of winning over disparate areas in support of a plan that raises taxes.

“What do we do, go out and buy Priuses?” asked Jeff Koscis, an area resident who testified in front of the joint transportation committee. A Prius is a hybrid car made by Toyota. “Those cost money. We can’t catch a break from you people.”

Patrick emphasized that each region would get back most of what they put into the tax in the form of road and bridge construction. He acknowledged the Big Dig debt is an obstacle in the state’s ability to invest elsewhere.

He also pointed out that some projects benefit Western Massachusetts more than Greater Boston, including expansion of a universal broadband project and help with the Springfield government’s finance plan.

Gas tax, Pike hike add fuel to fire
By Howie Carr | Sunday, February 22, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Politics

Gov. Deval Patrick, what part of “no” do you not understand?

No to the 19-cent increase in the gas tax.

No to the obscene hike in the tolls.

I know, the highest state gas tax in America will merely cost the “average” motorist “one large cup of coffee a week.” It’s the least we can do for what Deval calls the infrastructure – the bloated T pensions, the sticky-fingered Mass Pike tolltakers and Troop E’s detail-inflated, six-figure salaries, not to mention the “prevailing wage” scam – methadone-addled ditch diggers making $50 an hour.

How appropriate that Deval’s as-yet-unwritten legislation is called the “Transportation and Economic Security Plan.”

Economic security, all right. For hacks and pinky-ring union thugs.

Like Wimpy in the old Popeye cartoons, Deval will gladly give you “reform” tomorrow for a tax increase today. He leaked his soak-the-motorists scam to his sycophants at the dying broadsheet Friday morning, then delivered the speech on the Friday afternoon of a school-vacation week. How much more do you need to know?

Still, you owe it to yourself to read the entire opus – preferably on an empty stomach. Let’s get right to it: “Every time we hear another story . . . about a state worker collecting one pension from the T while earning another in state government, the average citizen gets madder.”

One of those double-dippers would be the son of Billy Bulger, he of the $197,000-a-year state pension, with whom Deval met regularly at Mul’s Diner on West Broadway during the 2006 campaign to concoct grand schemes to beggar the working man. Another of those MBTA double-dippers is the boss of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, Jim Rooney, several of whose board members Deval appoints. Maybe I missed it, but have any of Patrick’s MCCA appointees ever raised concerns about Rooney’s rip-offs?

“Don’t perpetuate the Big Dig culture,” Deval intones.

Right . . . the one that provided sleazy Jim Aloisi, Deval’s new transportation secretary, with millions in legal fees, not to mention one of those tsarist pensions that make us “average citizens” get madder.

“Let me be clear: the ‘23 years and out’ rule, where T employees start receiving a pension earlier than any reasonable retirement, is coming to an end.” Let me be clear: If you believe that whopper, you’re probably still holding your breath waiting for that property tax relief that candidate Patrick promised you in 2006.

Strangely, there wasn’t a single word in his speech about removing the toll booths on the Pike, which were supposed to come down in 1987. He does mention the “stiff imminent increases in tolls” that his Pike board may be rubber-stamping soon. He’s quite worried about all of us from “the North Shore, East Boston and MetroWest,” though not concerned enough to order his tax-fatted hyenas who run the Pike to take that extortionate option off the table.

Deval does promise to eliminate “about 300 positions,” no names attached, and I predict neither of Rep. John Fresolo’s siblings will have to be extracted from their Worcester toll booths with the Jaws of Life.

How stupid does Patrick think we are? As long as the Pike toll booths are up, we are all held hostage, like that rich businessman shaken down by the “escort” from Canton who kept blackmailing him every time she ran short on dough.

Don’t blame me, I voted for Muffy. For the rest of you guilt-ridden sheeple, how’s this one-party rule thing working out for you?
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1153783