Toll Equity Trust Blog

The Turnpike Authority’s legal team was out in full force today to try to quash the tollpayer rebellion for fairness in their midst as the Toll Equity class action lawsuit burst back into the courtroom.

Much like their strongly-worded statement earlier this week at the behest of Governor Deval Patrick (you remember, the one where they called our claims “baseless” and chided us – the tollpayers – for wasting cherished Turnpike dollars), the Turnpike came ready for a fight.

Turnpike lawyer Brian Kaplan. tried to throw everything including the kitchen sink at our attorney, Jan Schlichtmann – including baseless personal attacks on Jan, myths about this lawsuit shutting down the highway and lots of financial smoke and mirrors. He summed it up best when he said of tollpayer claims of unfairness, “So what?”

In the end, Judge Herman Smith took our motion under advisement. We don’t know when he will rule but we know from his questions that he is analyzing the facts and arguments in this case carefully and knows the importance of his decision.

In a nutshell, the Trust is looking for the Turnpike to stop its longstanding practice of diverting tolls they collect from us on the Metropolitan Highway System and diverting it to pay for the free portions of the MHS. Jan stood before the judge and cited the numbers compiled by our traffic engineer – that of the 632,000 average daily weekday users of the MHS, only 288,000 pay tolls. That means another 344,000 users, a whopping 54 percent of all MHS users on the average weekday, are getting a free ride. It also means that 46 percent of us are paying not only for ourselves but for another driver to get a free ride.

Jan went on to say that the Turnpike, in its defense, didn’t cite one legal case which showed it is proper for the minority – in this case the tollpayers – to subsidize the majority. That is illegal, unfair and unconstitutional, Jan argued.

Jan went on to undercut the claims from the Turnpike, written about today in the MetroWest Daily News, that our lawsuit will literally mean the end of the Turnpike. The Turnpike’s lawyers say that settling with tollpayers for these past wrongs would mean shutting down the Turnpike, stopping police services, maintenance and operations.

But Jan was able to show by simple math that the Pike has plenty of money to pay all its costs and still have $42 million left over at the end of the fiscal year. “Forty-two million in walking around money,” as Jan called it.

The Turnpike lawyer offered little more than sniping personal attacks on Jan and on tollpayers.

He seemed to try to mislead the court saying the Turnpike only received $8 million of the $100 million it was promised this year from the Legislature. But Jan pointed out that the law clearly states the Turnpike (and the successor agency which takes over on November 1) will get $100 million this year – a point they didn’t refute.

The Turnpike also tried to claim they were like Cinderella’s carriage at midnight – that after November 1, they would just go away. They were trying to say the Turnpike won’t have any of the $100 million given to it by the Legislature after November 1 and that we are suing the wrong entity. Not true. After November 1, as these same lawyers argued in a previous court hearing, all assets, liabilities and even this case will become the property of the new Massachusetts Department of Transportation so the point in moot.

But Turnpike attorney Kaplan summed up their attitude toward tollpayers best at one point in the hearing when he suggested that if there is a diversion of Turnpike toll revenue to pay for the Big Dig, “So what?”

So what?

Well, Mr. Kaplan, we have 2,300 people here (and growing every day) who think that is just the attitude that got the Turnpike into this mess and all the other messes over the years.

So what if the Big Dig costs another billion? So what if we don’t tell taxpayers about it? So what if we overpay our people for no-show jobs? So what if we raise tolls over and over again? So what if we take tollpayer money and spend it on roads others use for free?

As usual, Jan answered each of the Turnpike’s false charges tenaciously and put on quite a compelling case for our side.

We don’t know what the judge might rule but we’ll let you know when he does and, either way, we’ll march on. For now, the best the Turnpike can offer is, “So what?”

No big surprise, but that attitude is always disappointing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.