nothin Lamont: Debt Or Tolls? Your Pick | New Haven Independent

Lamont: Debt Or Tolls? Your Pick

Thomas Breen photo

Gov. Ned Lamont Monday with Chamber President Garrett Sheehan.

Gov. Ned Lamont presented New Haven’s business community with a choice for how the state will pay for necessary transit improvements: through tolls or through debt.

Connecticut’s governor made that pitch Monday morning in a keynote address to the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce about his nascent administration’s economic development priorities.

Lamont made that pitch Monday morning in a keynote address to the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce about his nascent administration’s economic development priorities.

Around 50 local business leaders and economic development officials came out to listen to the governor in conversation with Chamber President Garrett Sheehan during the hour-long event at the Shubert Theater on College Street.

Lamont, whose administration just passed its first 100-day mark, said that improving the state’s public infrastructure remains towards the top of his legislative agenda. One key way to fund those improvements, particularly quicker rail service to and from New Haven and New York, is through electronic highway tolls, which Lamont has proposed implementing.

Monday morning’s Chamber meeting at the Shubert.

I think that upgrading our transportation system to the 21st century,” he said, having New Haven as a major transportation hub, to be able to get from New Haven to New York in 20, 30 minutes less time, is absolutely the most important investment we can make if you believe in the future of this state and economic growth.”

He praised Repbulican legislators for coming to the table” to talk about infrastructure improvements, and for no longer pushing the narrative that the state should be doing more with less” to fix its decaying train tracks and roads. I’m sick of those debates,” he said.

He said his administration and both Republican and Democratic legislators now all agree that the state needs $700 to $800 million more each year in order to fix its aging transportation infrastructure.

Here you have a real choice,” he said. The Republican plan, they call that prioritized progress. I call it prioritized bonding. As opposed to our debt diet that would reduce the amount of borrowing we do against the general fund, reduce the amount of borrowing that taxpayers would have to pay, the Republican plan would add something like $700 million a year to that general fund bond obligation. It’s the exact opposite direction we ought to go.”

Electronic highway tolls, he said, would be paid for mostly by big trucks and out-of-state drivers. If you bond it,” he said, that’s all paid for by is and our kids. One hundred percent.”

You guys just got to make up your mind on this,” he continued. Cause’s that’s what the choice is. I’m asking people to make a sacrifice in order to get this done.”

Tweed Plans Pitched

Lamont.

At the event, Sheehan praised Lamont for voicing his support on the campaign trail for expanding the runway at Tweed New Haven Airport. A bill that would eliminate the current runway limitation recently passed out of the Transportation Committee, and will now be voted on by the full state legislature.

I want to put my shoulder to the wheel on that,” Lamont said about the Tweed bill. He recognized that neighbors in the East Shore area feel that they would be disadvantaged by the runway extension and the concomitant increase in plane traffic.

He said he and legislators and businesses working on the bill now are bouncing around ideas like creating a mortgage subsidy plan to encourage residents. He said that would stabilize property values and make East Shore an attractive area to move even after the prospective expansion of the runway. Another idea he is considering, he said, is working with New Haven Promise to establish college scholarship for students who live in the area.

He said adding plane service from New Haven to cities like Miami, Washington D.C., and Chicago would be a game changer for the local and state economy.

That would involve changing state law to allow paving more of Tweed’s runway, an idea that has met with vocal opposition in Morris Cove.

I’ve got airlines lined up that want to do it,” he said. I’ve got a management company that would like to finance this. For another 1,500 feet on that runway, I think that would be transformative.”

Dennis Bollier.

Dennis Bollier, the founder and CEO of a company called Employee Health Matters LLC and a former pilot himself, said that he has watched closely over the decades as local politicians and businesspeople have tried in vain to increase plane traffic at the regional airport. It’s a shame that nobody’s been able to do anything about it in all these years,” he said. Perhaps that will change with this gubernatorial adminsitration, he said.

I’ve got to get people to the table,” Lamont replied. I don’t want to kick the can down the road.”

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch part of Monday’s press conference.

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