Toll removal dies a quiet death

...so quiet we wrote a brief this morning, largely because we sounded the death knell the day before. Here's the nib:

Proposal to remove tolls declared dead
Officials yesterday officially declared dead the proposal to remove tolls from the western Massachusetts Turnpike. "From our perspective, without the support of the new administration, the proposal could not move forward, so we're not going to pursue it further," said turnpike spokesman Jon Carlisle after a meeting between the Turnpike Authority chairman, John Cogliano, and state Transportation Secretary Bernard Cohen. "We didn't hear anything that made us change our mind , " Cohen said. The state cannot afford to eliminate a revenue source, he said, because the transportation system may be as much as $19 billion short .