Gov. broke parkway toll promise

Gov. James McGreevey is bragging widely about his supposed accomplishment of taking tolls down on the Garden State Parkway. Not true!

Follow-up on this story discloses that the governor is removing some booths at the Asbury Park and Raritan toll plazas and converting the remaining booths to one-way tolls at 70 cents each.

Citizens Against Tolls suggested this procedure to the governor more than a year ago as a method of improving safety and alleviating congestion at these locations, and this was to be step one in total removal of parkway tolls. The governor rejected our idea out of hand at that time.

Now he brags, but does not point out the millions of taxpayers’ dollars being squandered by his action — $11 million at Raritan and $9 million at Asbury Park, and $45,000 for public service announcements.

The irony is that if the governor had kept his campaign promise to remove parkway tolls, the waste of all these millions would be unnecessary. But then there would be no fat-cat contracts for political friends.

This is one more outrage on taxpayers by a governor who, as he leaves office, has ignored this last opportunity to do this right thing.

John Millett

Citizens Against Tolls

Manasquan