Editorial: Turnpike debt problems must be Harrisburg priority

Tribune-Review | Monday, September 12, 2022 9:17 p.m.

Signs on electronic toll booths entering the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Gibsonia alert motorists to the Toll by Plate collection system.

When it comes to editorials, there are two things that most Tribune-Review readers agree on and utterly despise, without regard to party or politics:

The Pittsburgh Pirates could screw up a one-car funeral, and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission would increase the tolls on that one car astronomically.

Pennsylvania Auditor General Timothy DeFoor seems to have no official commentary on the Pirates’ performance, but a recent review of the turnpike commission has some appalling numbers to report, according to Pennlive.

The agency is obligated by state law to give a hefty sum to PennDOT every year to bankroll other transportation projects. This year, that number is $50 million — and it will stay that way for decades to come. Since 2007, however, the figure was nine times as much — $450 million.

The problem is that the turnpike wasn’t generating enough money for the commission to pay that much money and handle its own obligations. That meant it was doing the governmental equivalent of getting a payday loan to make the monthly minimum on a credit card bill. It borrowed the money to pay the obligation.

The impact of that “robbing Peter to pay Paul” strategy is a massive amount of debt— $13.2 billion. It’s hard for most people to make sense of billions without context, so here’s a little comparison. The debt amassed by the turnpike commission is $1.5 billion more than the entire state of Pennsylvania’s debt.

The commission’s debt is equal to the cost of the Navy’s largest, most advanced aircraft carrier or how much Amazon paid to acquire NFL broadcast rights for 11 years. It’s a staggeringly large amount of debt, and none of it is the commission’s fault — much as we all might like to blame it.

The Pennsylvania government has thrown the commission into the bottom of the state’s deepest hole, then tossed in a shovel and said, “Keep digging.” The fact that how much they are digging has decreased this year is immaterial. The hole is still getting deeper.

The Legislature and the governor — whether Tom Wolf or whoever wins in November — must make fixing this monumental screw-up their top priority. It is part of other problems, not the least of which is PennDOT’s overall funding future.