Pennsylvania can’t pick pockets of motorists to balance budget

Pennsylvania can’t pick pockets of motorists to balance budget

It ought to be a wake up call for any state when an arm of the federal government takes action that results in restoring a bit of fiscal discipline.

So it is with Pennsylvania, which saw its get-rich-quick scheme to turn Interstate 80 into a toll road rejected by the Federal Highway Administration.

The highway administrators properly recognized that Pennsylvania was attempting to turn an asset paid for by federal taxpayers into a Keystone State cash cow.

Money, money, money, money

The state intended to use the estimated $450 million it would collect in tolls on I-80 to balance its transportation budget. Cars and trucks using I-80 would be paying for roads and bridges across the state and to subsidize mass transit, primarily in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

It was a shortsighted plan that would have given Gov. Ed Rendell and the Legislature an easy way to balance the budget at the long-term expense of commerce and development along the I-80 corridor.

Had the Federal Highway Administration buckled, it would have encouraged every state in the union to attempt to turn federally funded assets into local revenue generators.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s dream of coast-to-coast interstate freeways would have lasted barely 50 years.