Community Corner
Community Update
The General Assembly voted to delay collecting tolls on the
Sakonnet River Bridge until February 1, 2014 while studying ways to fund bridge
maintenance statewide. Speaker Gordon
Fox made a deal with the East Bay representatives to support funding the 38
Studios fiasco in exchange for delaying the tolls. The budget passed with those two
provisions. And then 5-days later,
Speaker Fox reneged on the deal, reinstated the tolls starting in August, and
threw the people of East Bay under the bus as well as the East Bay
representatives (we think). One hour
later, Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed did the same thing and threw the East
Bay people (including those in her own district of Newport) under the bus. This is Rhode Island politics at its worst.
Representative Nicholas A. Mattiello (Cranston), House
Majority Leader, defended the bill and called it a "User Fee". If
that is the logic, then why aren't all the bridges in Rhode Island subject to
user fees?
Roger Lord, Member
Board of Directors
Little Compton Taxpayers Association