Putting Toll Removal on Hold the Right Decision

A decision by a House committee on Wednesday to retain the Senate bill that would remove the Exit 12 toll booth from the F.E. Everett Turnpike means the bill is likely to get put on hold at least until next year.

Merrimack Rep. Richard Barry said this was “the right decision in the grand scheme of things.”

“The concept is there is real work that needs to be done on the 10 year highway plan,” Barry said, and ultimately, this toll booth – and the other two in Merrimack – is part of it.

Barry said he would like to see the tolls removed from Merrimack as much as the next person, but given the situation placing the bill on hold was the “sane” thing to do.

Controversial votes in the House and Senate last week, with the House killing the casino bill and the Senate returning the favor with the Public Works and Highways Committee-approved gas tax bill, could've spelled disaster for the toll bill, Senate Bill 3, when it returned for discussion in committee on Wednesday, Barry said.

The committee could have deemed the bill inexpedient to legislate and passed to the House for an up or down vote where it likely would have been spiked for the year. By retaining the bill in committee, however, it will come up again.

Rep. David Campbell, R-Nashua, the chairman of the House committee, said Wednesday night that by retaining the bill, the committee has to take some sort of action on it in 2014.

He, Barry and Senate President Peter Bragdon, R-Milford, who was the primary sponsor of SB 3, expressed optimism that something would be done to provide toll relief in Merrimack sooner rather than later.

The underlying problem, all three agreed, is the state's need to make significant changes to the turnpike system, including the need for widening of bottlenecks and improving the toll infrastructure.

Campbell said he is still in favor of the idea of a commuter discount for residents who frequently use the toll booths, be them in Merrimack, Bedford, Hooksett, Hampton, Dover or Rochester.

But his committee will be seriously addressing the highways and turnpike systems later this year and Merrimack's tolls will be part of that discussion.

“(Turnpike) Widening needs to be addressed, the tolls need to be addressed,” Campbell said. “We can't look at things one step at a time, we need to look at them all at once.”

Bragdon's SB 3 bill initially called for the removal of all three booths, and was amended in the Senate Ways and Means Committee to remove only the Exit 12 booth.

Bragdon said the school of thought behind that was that the extra $900,000 a year coming in at Exit 10 where the Merrimack Premium Outlets opened about a year ago, would offset the approximately $500,000 that would be lost revenue from closing Exit 12.

But Bragdon said it goes back to not just focusing at one part of a much wider problem. He said he felt confident going in to Wednesday's hearing that the bill would not be put on the chopping block despite last week's votes, which had some legislators thinking the toll bill could become a pawn for retaliation against the Senate shooting down the Public Works and Highways-backed gas tax bill.

There are people on the Public Works and Highways committee who will always believe that Merrimack made a deal in the '80s to accept the toll booths in their town and they should live with that decision for the long term, Bragdon said.

Campbell is not among those who believe that, Bragdon said, and he talked with Campbell over the weekend about the fate of the bill.

“He expressed interest in working with me to get some toll relief for Merrimack,” Bragdon said.

He also said Campbell indicated to him the plan was still to retain the bill, that the casino and gas tax bills wouldn't trickle down to a backlash vote on the toll bill.

But Bragdon was cautiously optimistic Wednesday evening that Merrimack stands a good chance still of seeing Exit 12's toll collection cut all together.

“Certainly there are no guarantees around here, but we have gotten further with this any year than we have before,” Bragdon said. “It hasn't been killed in the House and that usually happens right off the bat.”

This is the first time a bill regarding the tolls in Merrimack has been voted up or down in the Senate.

Until this year, when Bragdon took over a new representative territory, which includes Merrimack, a bill that speaks to the tolls had never even been presented in a Senate committee. Previously the bills primary sponsors were members of the Merrimack House delegation and the bills were regularly stamped inexpedient to legislate in House committee, going on to die on the floor.

Barry shared in Bragdon's opinion of the bill's improved success despite failure.

“We came a lot closer to getting rid of one toll than we ever did. I don't know if we'll ever get rid of all three,” Barry said.

Legislators need to figure out where to come up with the money to improve the turnpike and highway system, Barry said, as the cost of materials like gravel, blacktop and fuel to power the vehicles needed to fix the roads continues to rise, and shows no signs of improving.

Barry said there will probably be a combination of a gas tax increase and a toll increase over the next 10 years to pay for the repairs needed to the turnpike infrastructure.

“I don't see a chance of fixing the problems unless we do a combination of both,” Barry said.

To his constituents, Barry said the decision made Wednesday was the right decision for now, given the circumstances. And he assured them:

“We're not going to give up hope, we're going to keep plugging away."