In a key development that seems to have eluded the eagle eyes over at the Erie Times-News, Republican U.S. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, along with Senate Democrats, Thursday night thwarted the efforts of two area Republican congressmen to ban tolls on Interstate 80.
With only one formality to be overcome, approval by the Federal Highway Administration, the imposition of tolls on the interstate, which cuts Pennsylvania in half on an east/west axis, appears to be a done deal.
U.S. Representatives Phil English of Erie and John Peterson of Venango County have led the fight against the tolls, successfully amending a transportation appropriations bill last summer to ban tolls on interstate highways.
But Thursday, Specter and Senate Democrats, at the request of Governor Ed Rendell, removed the English-Peterson amendment from the pending legislation.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette Reporter Ed Blazine quoted English in today's edition bitterly commenting that “The fix is in. It's clear that House Democrats, with the speaker's blessing and without the opportunity for a floor vote, have reversed the decision of the House from a few months ago, leaving I-80 open for the Harrisburg bureaucrats to toll." Peterson was quoted as saying that businesses will be "immensely burdened" by the tolls.
While Pennsylvania’s General Assembly, spurred on by Rendell, recently approved a compromise plan to impose tolls on I-80 as a way of funding mass transit and road and bridge building and maintenance, its action would have been meaningless without Congressional concurrence.
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