Governor Gina Raimondo's truck toll plan is flawed. The truck toll plan comes with a billion dollars in debt for Rhode Island to fund bridge and road repair. While repairs are needed, Raimondo's toll plan will take money out of the pockets of Rhode Islanders. Her own study shows Rhode Islanders would pay almost $13 million in higher prices and fees.

Many trucking companies and companies who rely on trucks for delivering their goods, including Pepsi, Coca Cola, Gold Medal Bakery, and the RI Truckers Association have testified that this tolling legislation would devastate their industry. This shows that there would be serious RI job losses in those industries.

When the plan does not work out, taxpayers will be on the hook and tolls will be extended to include cars, no matter what promises are made, no matter what is included in the legislation, similar to the way that 38 Studios worked out for Rhode Islanders.

• Tolling does not brand RI as a business friendly state, and in fact, brands us as a state with a hostile business environment.
• The Department of Transportation already expends nearly half a billion dollars a year and has been declared dysfunctional and unaccountable.
• Bridge repair is one of our highest priorities and a primary reason why state government exists.
• We the undersigned wish to inform the representatives we elected that we oppose tolls of any kind, whether on targeted classes of trucks or any other vehicle. 

Further, we oppose the issuance of bonds of any kind for this purpose as we expect elected leaders to prioritize the tax dollars they collect from us and put infrastructure as one of the highest priorities, allowing pay-as-you-go funding for bridge repair.