Patrick calls for timeout on gas-tax rise
Murray agrees, opposes toll increase
Governor Deval Patrick and Senate President Therese Murray rejected House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi's call for a speedy debate on a gas-tax increase, saying yesterday that such a volatile issue requires months of study and should only be included in a broader transportation reform plan.
As they gave the thumbs-down to DiMasi, what also became clear was how divided Beacon Hill power players have become over how to juggle Big Dig debts, fix crumbling roads, and build for the future.
Patrick wants to raise Massachusetts Turnpike and Boston Harbor tunnel tolls early next year to meet debt payments that threaten to bankrupt the Turnpike Authority. DiMasi says that toll hikes are unfair and that the gas-tax should instead be raised quickly to spread transportation costs among all motorists.
Murray, meanwhile, wants to delay all action that would increase costs for drivers until the state develops a comprehensive strategy. She said she might consider legislation that would derail the Turnpike Authority's planned toll increases.
As the competing visions swirled, the governor sent a rare letter to all the members of the Legislature last night, hoping to avoid political gridlock. In the letter, he called a toll increase unavoidable.
"The whole question of gas taxes versus toll increases is not quite where the choice is right now," Patrick said earlier in the day at a press conference downtown. "It will take time to have a comprehensive debate about the gas tax."
Murray also disagreed with DiMasi's push for the gas tax and raised the ante further. "I don't see the need to immediately raise the tolls or the gas tax," Murray said in an interview yesterday. "There are opportunities here that we should look at before we should go say, 'Give us more money.' I don't think the public trusts us to use the money wisely."
DiMasi stuck to his guns, meanwhile, telling reporters in Waltham that a gas tax increase "is probably the fairer way to address this issue."
The 23.5-cent gas tax has not been raised since 1991, other than a special 2.5-cent underground storage fee. A state commission that looked at the state's funding problems last year recommended raising the tax 11.5 cents and then tying it to inflation. Nearly 8 of 10 residents oppose raising the gas tax, according to a Survey USA poll of 500 residents done Monday night for WBZ-TV. Patrick and Murray have not ruled out raising the gas tax in the future.
The debate promises to dominate the Legislature's agenda when it reconvenes in January. At stake is how to raise and spend billions of taxpayer dollars to pay off huge Big Dig debts and fix the state's crumbling roads and bridges.
Patrick has proposed eliminating the Turnpike Authority, which operates the Big Dig, and merging its responsibilities into MassPort. Another idea on the table, although no politician has embraced it, is collecting new tolls on Interstate 93 and elsewhere. There is also a growing chorus pushing to privatize some of the state's roads to bring in additional revenue.
All the politically thorny issues would make it difficult for the Legislature to respond to DiMasi's call for a gas-tax increase before the toll hikes are scheduled to go into effect in April.
"It's going to be extremely difficult with an issue this complicated, politically and substantively, to pass something in the first 60 days of the Legislature," said Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and a member of the blue-ribbon transportation finance commission. "The speaker's pronouncement is the first chapter, but I'd say we've got 50, if not 100 more. This will play out over many weeks and months. I don't see how it can be short-circuited."
Lawmakers are sorting through the options.
"Everything and anything has to be on the table, including privatization and including raising the gas tax," said Representative Robert A. DeLeo, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who has been jockeying to become the next House speaker.
"The present system that was made relative to tolls is just too single-minded," DeLeo said. "I think we have to think outside the box a bit."
Some lawmakers criticized the governor for not acting sooner to begin fixing the state's transportation networks.
"Part of the problem is for the last 18 months we've all been waiting for a comprehensive plan," said Senator Steven A. Baddour, a Methuen Democrat and chairman of the Joint Committee on Transportation.
"We haven't received one, and then we wake up one day and are told tolls are going up to $7," Baddour said. "I understand shock and awe, but it's a little too dramatic."
Republicans seized on the debate over gas taxes to portray the Democratic governor and legislative leaders as engaging in post-election revenue raising.
"The election was only two weeks ago and already in record time, the Democrats want to increase taxes first instead of instituting long overdue reforms and decreasing state spending," said House minority leader Bradley H. Jones Jr.
The Turnpike Authority, which gave preliminary approval to toll hikes last week, released a schedule for hearings on its toll increases yesterday.
The board would have to vote a second time after the hearings before toll increases could go into effect in early April.
Alan LeBovidge, executive director of the Turnpike Authority, said he needs $100 million a year to keep roads repaired and pay off the debt.
But he said he does not care whether it comes from new gas taxes, or the toll hikes passed tentatively last week.
"Give [us] enough money on the gas tax, you can stop it," he said, referring to the toll collection. "And I don't think the board would have any problem doing that. We need money."
Noah Bierman of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com. 