It turns out that the General Assembly’s proposed 2017 budget will, after all, contain very partial relief from impending truck tolls in the form of lower registration fees for in-state trucks though, due to questions of constitutionality, the Speaker is asking that we not connect the two.

With the national trucking industry threatening to challenge the constitutionality of the truck tolls in court, after the first gantry goes up, House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello was insistent on Thursday that the registration-fee cuts in the newly unveiled budget bill have nothing to do with the tolls.

“I don’t want to connect the two,’’ House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello said Thursday.

Okayfine, they’re not connected. The reduction in registration fees for this NON-RELIEF from tolls will vary with truck size.

At the lowest end, the annual registration fee would drop from $106 to $78. For trucks weighing more than 74,000 lbs. — which are at the top end now — the fee would drop from $972 (plus $24 for every additional two pounds in weight) to $510. For even larger rigs, there would be a graduated fee schedule, topping off at $690 for tractor-trailer trucks weighing more than 104,000 pounds (plus $12 for every additional 2,000 lbs. of weight).

Soooo, on the upper end – $500-$600 savings per year? By the way, this means that some of the heaviest trucks which do the most damage (to use Governor Raimondo’s logic for implementing truck tolls) to our roads and bridges will be getting relief from tolls EVEN THOUGH THEY WILL NOT BE PAYING TOLLS.

Back to the matter at hand. Approximately $500-$600/year in registration savings for this NON-TOLL RELIEF. Now let’s look at the cost of tolls. At the $40 max per day, a truck driving around in Rhode Island, assuming he operates five days per week, fifty weeks a year:

5 days/week X $40/day = $200. $200 X 50 weeks/year = $10,000/year

Ten thousand dollars a year. Yeah. “Token” relief is actually an understatement, Christopher Maxwell, President of the Rhode Island Trucking Association:

“If they’re trying to help the truck industry, great,” Maxwell said. “But it’s a long way from undoing the damage the tolling would do. It looks to me more like a token gesture.”