August 15, 2011
BIPARTISAN GROUP OPPOSES TRANSPORTATION CUTS
House bill would cut 35 percent from Connecticut's roads, bridges
By Mike Patrick, Republican-American
Standing in a parking lot alongside Interstate 84, State Rep. Selim G. Noujaim, R-74th District, looked out as the eastbound traffic began to back up. He knew what was going to happen next.
"People start getting off the highway and start going through the neighborhood streets," he said. "They try to make up time and speed on the streets and cause more accidents on the side streets of Waterbury."
That wouldn't happen, he said, if the plan to widen I-84 was completed. But Noujaim gathered with several other politicians at the Park & Ride lot Friday to decry a proposed 35 percent cut to the state's transportation budget and promise to fight the congressional bill that includes the cut.
A bill proposed by House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., would cut 35 percent of current funding from Connecticut's roads and bridges, U.S. Rep. Christopher Murphy, D-5th District, said, adding the six-year bill would cost the state an estimated $167 million a year and cut close to 6,000 jobs.
"There's nothing better to create jobs than putting money into fixing our atrophied roads and bridges," Murphy told a crowd of transportation workers, some of whom, he said, are among the 22,000 who have lost their jobs in the state over the past four years. "When we go back to Washington in September, we're going to be fighting with every fiber of our being for a robust transportation bill."
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the Senate transportation bill, titled "Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century," provides the funding the House bill does not.
"We can't afford as a nation that kind of draconian cut," he said of the House bill. "We need an outpouring of bipartisan support."
He appeared to have it at the press event Friday, with Republican Noujaim supporting Democrats in decrying the proposed bill.
State Rep. Larry Butler, D-72nd District, also joined the opposition to the measure.
"All you have to do is come here at rush hour and you will know how important this project is, not only for Waterbury but for the state," Butler said. He added that keeping and creating transportation jobs also stimulates the state's economy.
"We need people with jobs willing to spend money to show the consumer confidence this state needs to make this economy turn around," he said.
An upgrade to the east-west highway between Exit 25A and Exit 22, was widely expected to begin construction in spring 2010 but was delayed because of uncertain funding. The project, which includes road widening between Austin Road and the Silver Street Expressway, is the final leg of a three-phase plan to make I-84 three lanes in both directions east of the Mixmaster.
Later in the day, Sen. Joe Markley, R-Southington, responded to the press conference in a written statement criticizing Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's transportation plan.
"To pay for the $1,000-an-inch New Britain to Hartford busway boondoggle, Gov. Malloy is diverting taxpayer dollars away from the very transportation projects that Sen. Blumenthal and Rep. Murphy are talking about," Markley said in the prepared statement. "Maybe our members of Congress should pick up the phone, call Gov. Malloy and urge him to block the bus."