Gov. Dannel Malloy on Thursday told a crowd of 200 at the 28th annual meeting of the Stamford Chamber of Commerce Inc. transportation would dominate the legislative agenda for his second term.
Addressing the audience at the Stamford Marriott Hotel & Spa, Malloy said he will ask for an amendment to the state constitution on the November 2016 ballot to guarantee payment for improvements. The initiative would place an already-achieved transportation allotment of 1.5 percent of state sales tax revenues into a “lock box” with the money dedicated exclusively for transportation.
Malloy said, absent the amendment, the funds will find other uses.
“If you can”™t house and move people in and out in a reliable way, your ability to attract the jobs being created is substantially challenged,” Malloy said.
- From left, Garry Feldman, president, U.S. Computer Connection and Stamford Chamber of Commerce Board chairman; Education Award winner Sharon White of UConn Stamford; and Gov. Dannel Malloy.
Malloy said $100 billion is needed across the next 30 years “to make up for 40 years of underfunding.” Such an outlay would lead to a “first-in-class system,” he said.
The governor said the state is losing $4.2 billion annually due to traffic-caused lost productivity.
“We have to pay to catch up,” he said.
Malloy called the Merritt Parkway a museum and Interstate 95 a parking lot. He also cited the antique bridges on the New Haven line of Metro-North as problems that could not be ignored.
Where I-95 is three lanes, Malloy said it must have four. And where it has two it must have three. He said Interstate 84”™s two lanes should become three.
He also said the past year has been the best for job growth, notably 80,000 private-sector positions. Government-sector jobs had not recovered from the recession, but Malloy didn’t cite that as a problem in his view.
“Government being smaller doesn”™t particularly bother me,” he said.
