Scarnati’s Transportation Plan

Senate Pro Tem Joe Scarnati has announced his own transportation funding plan – which he promised to do in January, including a “hybrid” Turnpike lease plan (he backtracked on that). The bulletpoints are here.

Scarnati proposes:

• No tolls on I-80 (popular in his district)
• Keeping the Turnpike Commission (popular among his allies in the Turnpike Commission), but reducing Turnpike toll increases
• Auditing the Turnpike Commission to find ways to save money (apparently because no one has identified cost-saving measures or waste in the Turnpike Commission)
• Allow Public Private Partnerships for new projects (the best idea in his policy outline)

The emphasis of his plan seems to be moving the cost of state police, $510 million per year, from the Motor License Fund (gas tax) to the General Fund (income tax). As this represents a spending increase – it is the equivalent of proposing $500 million in new road spending from the General Fund – Scarnati has to find a way to pay for it.

Since he doesn’t want a tax increase, he must be proposing cutting spending elsewhere, using our Government on a Diet report to find wasteful spending, right? Wrong – we’ll just borrow for it.