8th Essex Hot topic:
Toll increases on the North Shore 
(excerpt) A judge can sort out the constitutional issues. But the suit is strong evidence that the current system for paying for the state's transportation infrastructure is, at minimum, deeply unfair. Motorists coming from west of the city and from the North Shore pay dearly while those from the south get a free ride. Just how heavily can drivers at the Weston and Allston-Brighton tolls be expected to subsidize the rides of other drivers passing along the Central Artery from the Southeast Expressway?
Bay Staters still taken for a ride: Unjust tolls unbearable
The real beast is toll inequity. To slay it is to eliminate tolls altogether - that’s when Beacon Hill will earn bragging rights.
Transportation wreck averted Boston Globe editorial June 19, 2009
More immediately troublesome are two unfunded mandates. One is intended to keep Mass. Pike toll payers from footing even more of the cost of the Big Dig. Fair enough; commuters in Boston’s western [and northern!] suburbs have suffered plenty.
Lawmakers OK transportation fix By Henry Collins / The Daily Item
BOSTON - While state legislators approved a transportation reform package by a wide margin Thursday, several local lawmakers are split on the issue.
House members approved the measure that overhauls the state's road, bridge and commuter systems, 130-25, hours after senators approved the same bill by a 27-11 vote.
Ehrlich said prior to the House vote Thursday that the bill represents real transportation reform.
"Clearly the many voices from the North Shore calling for toll fairness and equity were heard," she said. "This is a great moment for all citizens and especially the long-suffering toll payers of the commonwealth," she said. "This bill is a declaration that fairness and equity are bedrock principles supporting our transportation system. This bill reaffirms a simple constitutional principle that toll money should be spent on tolled roads and not on something else."
Fare and toll hikes would be staved off by increasing the sales tax from 5 percent to 6.25 percent.
"Since November, when all we were hearing about was a gas tax, the Senate has insisted that we cannot simply throw new revenue into a broken transportation system ... we need to reform the system first," Senate President Therese Murray said Wednesday night. "Now, along with the House, we have delivered on the promise of Reform before Revenue. This is a landmark occasion for the commonwealth, which has never seen such a dramatic restructuring of its transportation system. We will all benefit from this major reform for decades to come."
DeLeo said, "This bill eliminates the antiquated and inefficient transportation structure in Massachusetts. It also brings considerable cost-savings. In a very short time, we have delivered on our promise to reform our transportation and pension systems, and I look forward to further action on ethics reform and the budget soon."
EDITORIAL: Spend tolls where they are collected
MARBLEHEAD - When does a user fee become a tax? When it is spent someplace other than where it was collected, for the benefit of people who weren't asked to pay it. If the state doubles the price of a campsite in a state park to fund raises for college professors, what was a fee designed to cover a service has become a general revenue-raiser, i.e., a tax.
By that same logic, if you collect a toll on the Mass. Turnpike and spend that money on a different road -- one that motorists pay no toll to use -- that user fee has been illegally diverted from the purpose for which it was collected. That's the argument made in Middlesex Superior Court this week by lawyers representing more than 1,700 Mass. Turnpike toll-payers. Their expert calculates that $442 million in toll revenue has been diverted to non-tolled roads -- namely the Big Dig -- since 2006.
Marblehead state Rep. Lori Ehrlich attended the preliminary hearing Monday where the state offered arguments on the other side. Some Pike toll-payers also use the Big Dig tunnels, and the Legislature authorized the Metropolitan Highway System, which lumps the tolled and non-tolled section together. It is an important issue with wide applications, one we hope the court will clarify.
"The Principles at the core of this lawsuit such as fairness, equity and potentially unlawful taxation are what I have been discussing since last fall's announcement that tunnel tolls were going to double to $7, " Ehrlich said after the hearing. "This inequity, which is literally putting jobs out of reach for people in our region, was set up in 1997. Attempts to finally fix it are playing out in all three branches of government."
But while resolution of the class actions suit is a long way off, its implication should be heard loud and clear in closed meetings being held on Beacon Hill. There, a conference committee is resolving differences between transportation reform bills passed by the House and Senate.
Both bills would abolish the Mass. Turnpike Authority, merging it into a larger, statewide transportation agency. The question is how high Mass Pike tolls will increase, and where will that money be spent? The fear is that those who pay tolls to ride the Pike or use the harbor tunnels will be paying to fill potholes and repair bridges from Pittsfield to Provincetown.
Using Pike tolls as an all-purpose ATM for the state's transportation needs isn't just unfair. It may also be illegal, which is what the class action suit is about. It's another reason why the conference committee must include toll equity in the bill sends back to the House and Senate.
The best way to protect the rights of the toll-payers is to include in the final bill language from the House version, which states that toll revenue can only be spent on the highways where tolls are collected -- a measure that Ehrlich, among others, has championed.
"While I cannot express an opinion on the legal case, I am working to make sure that the toll-equity amendment in the House version of the transportation-reform package clears conference committee so the Legislature can correct this worsening situation prospectively," she said.
That language doesn't preclude adding tolls on other roads, but it would take the unjust burden of the bonds issued to pay for the Big Dig off the shoulders of Pike toll-payers.
Arlington Advocate Senate, guv continue tango over transportation funding
Salem News: Rooking the Pawns by Alan Burke
Eagle Tribune: Senate vows to prevent toll hikes slated for July 1
COLUMN: Toll equity: Root of the problem lost in the exhaust
Marblehead - The governor hasn't been a stranger to the North Shore, and I was delighted to welcome him to Marblehead last Thursday evening. While he was here to explain the state’s budgetary difficulties, we had an exchange over tolls, and this highlighted for me that the conversation over toll equity needs to be cleared up. With a little over a month to go until the tolls are again slated to go up, there is no time like the present.
Everyone knows that the way we collect tolls in this state is both unfair and inequitable. In fact, The Mass Turnpike’s own “Toll Equity Working Group” reported in June 2008 that “58 cents of every dollar of [Metropolitan Highway System] tolls is required to pay for CA/T [Big Dig-related] costs.” This is a sobering fact to learn while traveling through the Sumner-Callahan tunnels constructed in 1934 and 1958. The tolls for these two old and deteriorating structures as well as the newer Ted Williams tunnel are slated to increase on July 1 from $3.50 to $7.
While the gas-tax idea failed to garner the necessary support in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, there was sufficient support for a sales-tax increase, part of which ($275 million) is for transportation — more than enough to cover both the toll hike needs of the Turnpike Authority and the fare increase needs of the MBTA.
But this is merely a Band-Aid.
This conversation needs to focus not on revenue but on a solution. There are two fundamental issues at the root of this problem that are unfortunately getting lost in the exhaust of the conversation over which revenue source is best.
A. Toll Equity: It’s not fair to put the burden of the largest public-works project in our nation’s history on the shoulders of the long-suffering North Shore and Metro West toll payers.
B. Potential Unconstitutionality: From the beginning we enshrined separation of powers in our Constitution, specifically granting the Legislature the power to levy a tax. The Turnpike Authority is not a taxing authority. It can only charge a fee, also known as a toll, for the tolled services provided. Yet, nearly 60 cents of every toll dollar collected is not going to the Turnpike but to cover the Big Dig.
This problem doesn’t need a revenue fix. It needs to be fixed. There are three potential solutions for this that, if implemented, would be successful in not only preventing the Turnpike Authority from increasing the tolls but mandating that tolls are equitable.
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By legislative action: As part of the House’s efforts to reform transportation, an amendment was overwhelmingly passed that would require that any toll collected in Massachusetts has to be used to service or maintain that tolled facility, not something else. I and several other determined legislators are working hard to insure that this amendment emerges from the conference committee intact. If it doesn’t, then even if the Turnpike Authority is replaced by a newly consolidated agency we will still have a situation where tollbooths remain virtual ATMs.
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By judicial decision: A class-action lawsuit filed recently in Middlesex Superior Court is arguing the constitutional principle that a toll should never be used as a tax and seeks to stop the unconstitutional expropriation of toll money.
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By leadership: It’s up to our elected leaders to clear away the smoke so our citizens do not confuse the fundamental requirement for toll equity with the needed discussion of how we can fairly share The Big Dig burden.
We cannot afford to continue finding ways to fund the status quo. We must take bold steps to fix problems, not merely delay them. Unless we have courageous leadership, the people will have no other option other than to reaffirm 200-year-old law or be forced to seek redress in the courts.
Rep. Lori A. Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, is a certified public accountant in her second term as a state legislator. She serves on the Joint Committee on Transportation and the Joint Committee on Revenue.
Arlington Advocate Senate, guv continue tango over transportation funding
Eagle Tribune: Senate vows to prevent toll hikes slated for July 1
EDITORIAL: Limiting the diversion of Pike Tolls Marblehead Reporter 
Marblehead - Anti-tax activists like to call anything the government takes from your wallet a tax, but words have meaning — especially in the law — and distinctions are important.
A toll on the Mass. Turnpike, for instance, is a user fee, not a tax. That limits who pays the toll to people who use the highway, but also restricts how those receipts can be spent.
The principle is a simple one: A user fee should only be used to offset the cost of providing the service it pays for. That was the operating principle of the Mass. Turnpike from the moment it was born. Toll revenue went to the Turnpike Authority, not the state's general fund, and the Turnpike Authority spent it only on the Pike.
That changed in 1997, under legislation that turned the Big Dig over to the Turnpike Authority. Suddenly, tolls that were collected on the east-west highway were being used to pay off bonds for the north-south highway — which drivers used for free. A user fee was being treated as a tax, collected from one group of citizens and spent to help another group of citizens.
According to a class-action suit filed recently in Middlesex Superior Court, the amount of money siphoned from toll-payers for purposes unrelated to the tolled road tops $300 million. The suit is an important marker, building on several precedents establishing limits on the diversion of user-fee revenue.
The political and legislative application of that principle is being tested right now, as a conference committee works to reconcile the House and Senate versions of legislation reorganizing state transportation agencies.
The House version of the bill includes language requiring that money collected as tolls can only be spent on the highway on which tolls are collected. That means tolls could continue to be collected to cover the cost of maintaining the Pike — I-90 from Logan Airport to Westfield, unless the westernmost tolls are brought back — but not to pay off bonds for the north-south section of the Big Dig, and not for any other untolled roads. The state could add new tolls on other roads, but their receipts would be subject to the same restriction.
Both transportation-reform bills eliminate the Turnpike Authority, merging it with several other transportation agencies and creating a central fund for all transportation spending. Unless the House language makes it into the final bill, the Mass. Pike toll-collecting machine could become an ATM, providing funding for roads, bridges and public transportation projects across the state.
The six-member conference committee began meeting last week, and immediately closed the door to the public and other legislators. Much is at stake in their deliberations, especially for those dependent on the Pike. Whatever bill emerges must embrace the principle that money collected on the Pike must only be spent on the tolled sections of the Pike. The civil suit is welcome insurance that if the Legislature violates that principle, the courts will have an opportunity to reinstate it.
Local reps join battle vs. moving toll monies by Debra Glidden, Lynn Item
Rep. Lori Ehrlich (D-Marblehead), who is a member of the state Transportation Committee, said she isn't involved in the lawsuit and couldn't comment on it directly, but added she is concerned about the inequitable distribution of tolls on the Pike and how the tolls are spent.
"As we're facing a potential doubling of our tax burden in 48 days, it's even more outrageous that the North Shore continues to finance infrastructure for the rest of the state," she said. "It's an eye opener for most people to know tolls on the North Shore fund the Big Dig and other projects. I didn't realize that until shortly after I was elected."
Ehrlich was instrumental in helping pass an amendment filed by Rep. Alice Peisch (D-Wellesley) to the proposed transportation reform package. The amendment, which has been passed by the House, has not been acted on by the Senate yet.
Hundreds sign on to sue Pike over ‘illegal’ toll tax by Jessica Van Sack, Boston Herald
But Rep. Lori Ehrlich (D-Marblehead), a member of the Transportation Committee, called the toll structure “unconscionable.” She is among those who helped the House pass an amendment filed by Rep. Alice Peisch (D-Wellesley) to the proposed transportation reform package that would bar using tolls from one road to fund another.
House members: Toll-hike vote endangers gov’s reforms (Swampscott Reporter and State House News Service)
"The cynicism the governor is fostering in the public and legislature with this pike board vote endangers the best possible outcome for the North Shore — reforms, which are desperately needed, and revenue collected equitably throughout the state,” said Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, who represents Swampscott on Beacon Hill.
“It also leaves us here on the North Shore stuck with both tolls and gas tax no matter the outcome. I am currently putting a great deal of my effort and accounting skills right now into examining the premise that this much transportation revenue is actually needed and why," Ehrlich said.
Speaker appoints committees, sets 9C budget debate Marblehead Reporter (excerpt) State Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, an outspoken critic of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority’s proposal for steep toll hikes at the Sumner and Ted Williams tunnels, was appointed to the Special House Committee on Transportation.
DiMasi noted, “These committees will help to begin our work on the important issues ahead, particularly important reform measures in transportation and the pension system.”
EDITORIAL: Toll hike is sign of failure Marblehead Reporter
Marblehead - As we headed to press, members of the Mass. Turnpike Authority Board were likely licking their wounds, taking a deep breath and gearing up for a public hearing in Framingham on its proposal to raise tolls, the third of four such hearings planned. On Monday night in Lynn, those board members faced a two-and-a-half-hour barrage at a similar meeting from dozens of local residents and officials, including state Rep. Lori Ehrlich and three members of the Marblehead Board of Selectmen.
Local officials join Pike-toll-hike outcry in Lynn Marblehead Reporter
Marblehead - State Rep. Lori Ehrlich and three members of the Board of Selectmen Monday night joined a chorus of dozens who, for two-and-a-half hours Monday night at Lynn City Hall, sang variations of the same tune: Stop the proposed doubling of the tolls at the Sumner and Ted Williams tunnels.
If their “audience,” the five members of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority Board and the authority’s executive director, did not get the message, it will not be due to a lack of turnout, volume or passion.
In all, over 300 people filled seats and stood around the perimeter of the Lynn City Council Chambers.
Ehrlich was part of a unified front of North Shore legislators and local officials urge the board to give Beacon Hill a chance to craft a comprehensive transportation-reform plan before advancing plans to raise the tolls from $3.50 to $7 for average commuters and impose similar hikes on commercial vehicles.
Ehrlich said that North Shore commuters had just gotten used to the $3.50 toll when news of that sum potentially doubling hit. For a North Shore resident working in Boston, a $7 toll would add up to over $1,800 annually, and if a family had two Boston-bound commuters, it would be more than $3,600.
“That sounds more like a family’s yearly grocery budget,” she said.
Ehrlich and most of her North Shore colleagues are co-sponsoring a bill, proposed by Rep. Steven Walsh of Lynn, which would strip the Mass. Turnpike Authority Board of the power to change toll rates until Dec. 31, 2009, or until “a comprehensive transportation plan is passed, whichever is sooner.”
Woodfin takes toll on Pike Board The Salem News
State Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, made it clear that locals aren't exactly warming to the idea of doubling the tolls. "My office has been literally swimming in correspondence from constituents who are outraged over this proposal," she said.
Join Representative Ehrlich for the North Shore hearing:
 Tomorrow evening is the only of the Mass Turnpike Authority's public hearing regarding their toll hike plan held held on the North Shore. Even if you don't want to speak, your presence will make a statement and it's a good chance to sound off a bit about the planned doubing of tolls from $3.50 to $7 on the Sumner and Ted Williams tunnels.
The hearing will be held at Lynn City Hall, 3 City Hall Square, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. and is open to the public. (directions here)
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Rep. Ehrlich's column in the Marblehead and Swampscott Reporters: Taking a toll on the North Shore
Salem News: Pols to Patrick: Take another route on tolls
State Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, joined Grant in calling for a "comprehensive" solution to the problem, noting that a "piecemeal" approach could cost more in the long run.
"Everything was on the table," she said. "(Patrick) seemed willing to consider a different approach."
She described telling the governor that a $7 toll could total $1,800 in a year for a regular commuter. "And these people are barely getting by now."
It was a productive conversation, she said. "This was a meeting that at least indicated a willingness to consider something more comprehensive."
Marblehead Reporter Editorial "Fight toll increases"
Marblehead - Without hesitation, we’ll add our full-throated voices to the hue and cry across the North Shore over the proposal to double tolls at the Sumner and Ted Williams tunnels to $7.
But at the very least, what seems to be needed is a “timeout.” That, in essence, is what legislation proposed by Rep. Steven Walsh, D-Lynn, would accomplish. Walsh’s bill is backed by a bipartisan group of 36 state lawmakers, including Marblehead’s Lori Ehrlich, and would strip the Mass. Turnpike Authority Board of the authority to change toll rates until Dec. 31, 2009, or until “a comprehensive transportation plan is passed, whichever is sooner.”
The North Shore delegation is united in pushing for passage of Walsh’s bill, but as Ehrlich notes, there is a role for the public to play, too.
“I only hope that this hike is so over the top that North Shore residents respond in force by attending hearings and submitting commentary,” she told The Reporter. “North Shore legislators are standing together to oppose [the toll increases] and come up with a better alternative. Citizens need to get involved.”
We hope you heed that call.
Marblehead and Swampscott Reporters: Double trouble: Legislators vow fight after Pike votes massive toll hike
Yvonne Abraham's column in the Boston Globe (recommended): No more free rides
The Boston Globe: Politics, fare hikes take toll on commuters
The Lynn Item: Lynn pols outraged over toll hike plan
The Eagle-Tribune : Mom: Higher tolls will take toll on the disabled
(excerpt) She wants people to know it's not just people who travel into Boston for work, the airports, sports games and entertainment who will be affected. It's not only the livery and delivery businesses that will take a hit.
Now it's time for ACTION. Please call and write:
Governor's Office
Governor Deval Patrick
Office of the Governor
Room 360
Boston, MA 02133
p- 1-888-870-7770
e- email
Mass Turnpike Authority
Executive Director
Alan LeBovidge
Mass Turnpike Authority
State Transportation Building
10 Park Plaza, Suite 4160
Boston, MA 02116
p- 617-248-2800
e- email
Please send my office your commentary too:
Rep.loriehrlich@hou.state.ma.us
Your action matters. Thank you.
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