Rendell, Fumo: Foes of I-80 tolls will fail

Efforts to block tolls on Interstate 80 are effectively dead, State Sen. Vincent Fumo and Gov. Rendell said yesterday.

With state highway officials preparing an application to request the authority to put tolls on I-80, Fumo and Rendell said Pennsylvania Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate had assured them that two House Republicans from rural Pennsylvania would fail in their bid to stop the plan.

Fumo, an influential Philadelphia Democrat, took a verbal swipe at U.S. Reps. John E. Peterson and Phil English, calling them intellectual lightweights and "hypocrites."

The I-80 tolls are a linchpin of the transportation-funding law the legislature passed last month. The plan to provide about $950 million a year in added funding for highways and mass transit depends on toll increases on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, new tolls on I-80, and 4.4 percent of the revenue from the state sales tax.

Tolls on I-80 require Federal Highway Administration approval because the road was built largely with federal funding as part of the free interstate system.

Peterson and English amended a transportation appropriations bill last month to prohibit the use of federal funding to install tolls on I-80. The House approved the bill and sent it to the Senate.

Rendell and Fumo told reporters in Philadelphia yesterday that the Pennsylvania Democrats had assured them the amendment would not survive in the final bill.

"That is dead," Fumo said. "I went to Washington last week . . . and it will be straightened out."

Fumo dismissed Peterson and English as opportunists. He said he had worked with Peterson in the legislature, "and we were never impressed with him. Phil English used to run the Xerox machine in the Senate staff, and I'm not sure about his depth."

Julia Wanzco, English's spokeswoman, derided Fumo's comments. "Sen. Fumo is absolutely absurd," she said last night. "His attack is a reminder why Harrisburg politicians are figures of fun."

She noted that English had been research director of the state Senate Labor and Industry Committee when Fumo was the ranking member, and that English had been executive director of the Senate Transportation Committee.

"The congressman's record speaks for itself," she said.

Fumo criticized Peterson and English for voting against the transportation bill after they had put in the I-80 amendment. "I hate hypocrites, and I hate people that pander," Fumo said.

Rendell was more circumspect. "I share the belief that the provision will be taken out in conference," he said. But he did note of the Pennsylvania Democratic delegation, "This is the same group that let it get in in the first place."

"What I found most offensive about this was the effort to pit Philadelphia against the rest of the state," Rendell said.

Travis Windle, spokesman for Peterson, said, "Oftentimes, folks move to personal attacks when the facts are against them. My boss is right on this issue."

Windle called Fumo the "patron saint of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and SEPTA," and said Rendell was hypocritical to complain about a lack of federal funding for roads and bridges after shifting $412 million in federal highway money to mass transit.

"It would behoove Sen. Fumo and Gov. Rendell to go back and read the 2005 PennDot study on tolling I-80. It concluded tolling was not advisable," Windle said. "My boss would be glad to hand-deliver them a copy."

"Facts are darn things, and they hurt," Windle said.

In Harrisburg, PennDot and turnpike officials are putting the final touches on their joint application to the Federal Highway Administration requesting the authority to add tolls to I-80.

Turnpike chief executive officer Joseph G. Brimmeier said federal officials would be asked to give Pennsylvania conditional approval. That could be done within weeks, Brimmeier said.

Then the state would conduct a study of the environmental impact of building toll booths and related construction. That would take about a year, Brimmeier said, and then the state would seek permanent approval of its toll plan.

"I want this to be a two-year process," Brimmeier said, who added that he hoped tolls could be in effect by 2009 or 2010.