There’s still time for surprises before the General Assembly ends its session, probably within a couple of weeks, but it looks like I was wrong to conclude that the toll on the Sakonnet River Bridge would not be removed, and that the legislative push for alternative transportation funding was in large part a “distraction dance” to make it seem as if the legislators from the East Bay were doing everything they could in that futile cause.  So what went wrong?  Or rather, what went right that made me wrong?

One obvious factor is that the East Bay representatives got lucky inasmuch as a surprise change of leadership gave them negotiating power during the campaign for speaker.  I’ve been saying all along that the legislators had to become single-issue voters, pledging not to support any legislation by any peers who would not support ending the tolls.  When Nicholas Mattiello became rapidly interested in the single issue of his own election to the chair at the front of the House chamber, support for that one proposal became as politically valuable as a session full of “nay” votes.

Another thing that the change in leadership did was to paint a line between the vote to implement the toll and the vote to remove it.  Even though Mattiello was a lead proponent of the toll on the night that it passed, he was so as the majority leader under Speaker Gordon Fox.  Because the membership of the General Assembly is pretty much the same as it was, that line is hardly a barrier, but it makes a political difference when the public learns that the state government spent nearly $5 million to set up the toll and, by halting it, will only have collected about $700,000 and that there’s potentially another million due as a termination fee to the company with which the state contracted.

Another error I apparently made was in overestimating how much legislators from other parts of the state would care about a plan that raises gas taxes and various automobile fees on their constituents.  With the toll a done deal and only the local senators and representatives able to be reached by the affected voters, I didn’t expect all of the rest to agree to more nickle-and-diming of their constituents during an election year.

In that regard, it appears that my massive cynicism was still not enough, at least when it comes to the degree to which legislators really do see their neighbors as an endless source of funds.