Gov. Ned Lamont and Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano are again trading verbal blows over a solution to Connecticut”™s transportation issues, with Lamont and fellow Democrats”™ preference for tolls being the main point of contention.
As previously reported, the governor is working with members of both parties to 
hold a special legislative session by Christmas to address several still-pending issues, including transportation and the state”™s annual bonding package, which includes money for municipalities to make improvements to their infrastructures.
“If the governor wants votes, we need answers and transparency,” Fasano wrote to Lamont following that news. “For months the governor has refused to share the bonding package with Republican lawmakers. And the public still has not been shown any details about the new House Democrat/Gov. Lamont combined tolling proposal.”
“Senator Fasano must hold a different definition of bipartisanship,” responded Lamont”™s Director of Communications Max Reiss. “The governor”™s administration has invested considerably in pursuing a bipartisan solution on transportation, working directly with Senator Fasano. That work involved countless meetings and discussions, a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Authority ”“ both of which are part of a Republican presidential administration, and the governor himself addressed the Senate Republican caucus.”
“Regarding Senator Fasano”™s aggressive claims that he”™s been left out of the budget and bonding discussions ”“ he”™s right,” Reiss continued. “He and every Republican in the General Assembly chose not to participate in them. They submitted no budget and presented no alternatives.
“As Senator Fasano knows full well, per the governor”™s insistence, the bonding bill, which is typically developed in the budget process, was separated out and put on hold until transportation was sorted out,” Reiss concluded. There has been no action on the bonding agenda because there has been no action on transportation. Now that progress is being made, those discussions will begin anew, which the governor stated yesterday.”
Should a special session not be called, the issues would presumably be voted upon during the next, regular legislative session, which runs from Feb. 5 to May 6.
The governor and his fellow Democrats know only one way of doing things spend spend spend tax tax tax and they’re chasing good business and good people out of the state! They have done nothing serious to reign in the overwhelming costs of state unions Who have them in their back pockets and all they can do is continue to come up with ways to take more money out of the hard-working citizens of Connecticut’s pockets.
Any Connecticut, “state” transportation “plan” must, logically, be COMPREHENSIVE, per its being married to a comprehensive plan of development that pursues a socioeconomic vision for the state that is created by way of seeking a return to true prosperity for the whole of the state. For nearly six decades, to the present, the socioeconomic development needs of the whole of the state of Connecticut have not been considered, as such — in a short- or long-term context. Economic development in Connecticut has been considered and dealt with in mostly a shorter-term context, with the focus being mainly on the affluent, influential Gold Coast…
The present Lamont Administration transportation “plan” focuses mainly on addressing traffic congestion caused by the destructive promotion/maintenance of the the socioeconomic primacy of the southwestern wedge of the state (Stamford/Greenwich), which focus/policy, over the past six decades, has caused a literal traffic bottleneck within the state’s transportation lifeline that has led to the not-so-slow, inexorable, economic death of the state, as a whole, and which is now threatening to cook the Gold-Coast Goose that state development policy seeks to serve…
Unless, and until the Lamont Administration creates a workable, visionary, comprehensive plan of economic development for the state as-a-whole, transportation funding should be limited to addressing infrastructure maintenance and acute safety needs. Indeed; neither major bonding, nor tolling, should be enabled by the legislature for transportation-related spending unless and until a COMPREHENSIVE transportation-infrastructure creation/improvement plan (created to serve a comprehensive, visionary, economic development plan) is developed by the Lamont Administration and approved by the GA…
Well said. We are trailing the other 49 state in housing recovery as well, with most homes still underwater.