Don’t replace bad toll idea with a bad leasing idea

If Pennsylvania state transportation officials can muster up any inkling of logic, fairness and fiscal integrity, they will immediately rescind an application to federal officials to implement tolls along the 350-mile stretch of Interstate 80 in the state.

Further, they must not replace that misguided idea with another equally abhorrent idea: leasing the Pennsylvania Turnpike to a private operator.

Federal Highway Administration officials recently returned the Keystone State’s $50 round-trip toll application marked insufficient facts.

Missing in the application were specific details about funding plans, improvements for I-80, and beneficiaries of the new revenue, according to the FHA.

“It’s clear that the turnpike has not yet completed even basic consultations with local agencies, let alone collaborated with local leaders in developing a final project. Their application proves to be woefully inadequate and silent on a lot of key details,” U.S. Rep. Phil English, R-Erie, said.

English, who represents the Shenango Valley and who vigorously opposes the tolling plan, is right. It’s time to deep-six the toll plan by abolishing Act 44 that implemented it.

Income tax credits

Instead, some in the state merely want to tinker. State Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Centre, wants Pennsylvania to offer income tax credits of up to $500 for all in-state users of the highway. That’s blatantly unfair to the three-quarters of interstate users estimated to be from out of state. The interstate highway was built as a federal asset for free transit by all of its users and should be preserved as such. The tax-credit plan smacks of highway robbery.

Meanwhile, Gov. Ed Rendell has an equally reprehensible substitute plan up his sleeves, leasing the 514-mile turnpike. We’ll at least give Rendell some credit for recognizing the obvious: Most Pennsylvanians and others who use I-80 between Ohio and New Jersey want nothing to do with tolls.

Rendell now acknowledges that many have protested the toll plan on the grounds that it would hurt commerce and economic development everywhere in its path. But resurrecting his idea to lease the turnpike serves as no viable alternative.

In effect, Rendell would take the pike, also a transportation asset built over decades by people who had the desire to invest in their future, and convert it to immediate use to help balance a red-ink budget caused by the fiscally illiterate in Harrisburg. And there are no clear guarantees such a leasing arrangement would produce greatly increased revenue in the short- and long-terms.

What has been a guarantee for far too long is the failure of leaders in the executive and legislative branches of Pennsylvania state government to act responsibly to live within their means. That would require following the model of the private sector, which has become adept at cutting spending in the face of stagnant and even declining revenues.

In the case of the ongoing highway debate in Pennsylvania, that means not offering unfair tax breaks for drivers on a tolled I-80, not tolling I-80 at all and not outsourcing the turnpike. The sooner these pernicious ideas are sideswiped, the sooner state leaders can seriously begin a drive to balance their budgets responsibly.