scandal

Hey please call back, you who gave me the "tip" on the guy who was behind his girlfriend's law suit at the toll authority, and then hung up.

Please tell me which law suit it is and where the case is filed?

Also does the boy friend get anything out of the toll authority he shouldn't as a result of this relationship?

I guess that's what you're saying, but I need more than you've given me to even start digging - editor

TOLLROADSnews 2010-02-01

Who says crime doesn't pay. Michael P Lewis, 46, the Massachusetts Turnpike's Big Dig manager through serial scandals, multi-billion dollar cost overruns, shoddy construction, and a fatal ceiling collapse, 2000 to 2007 - the biggest public works management fiasco in America in modern times - the manager of this megamess is now on a Turnpike pension for life of $72,578 plus 80% health insurance, the Boston Globe reports.

What seemed a corruption scandal over payments of more than $100k to an anti-toll activist and a huge fight with the Orlando toll authority's PR man have fizzled away to nothing. The toll authority this week voted 3 to 1 to settle for $8,320 an 18 month old legal fight with PR guy Ron Pecora.

The fall of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer today could be a major blow to proposals for a central area toll in New York City. Spitzer was a major supporter of the congestion pricing plan and carried considerable political heft.

Spitzer was caught in a federal tax, money laundering and interstate prostitution case as a client of a $5k/hour call girl. He said today he had violated obligations to his family and "any sense of right and wrong."

There is some journalism school somewhere where they teach a "tollroad-execs-living-it-up-at-your-expense" formula story because you see the identical thing pop up all over the place, year after year in print, TV, radio and on the web - just the names, the meal menus, and the money are different.

The suspicious thing about these reports is that the toll industry's trade association IBTTA always gets a priceless plug  for running lap o' luxury, party-time events in exotic locales.

CBS TV News in New York is reporting that MTA Bridges and Tunnels (MTAB&T) have given away 24,000 E-ZPasses so the favored can have free rides over the toller's nine toll bridges and tunnels in New York City, and presumably over other toll facilities in the regional E-ZPass system as well since the it can't discriminate.

All the fuss at the Harris County Toll Road Authority (HCTRA) was back in May. Mike Strech, tollroad director resigned after a confrontation with his county government boss Art Storey over soliciting vendors for support for an annual staff party. The implication was that he left under an ethical cloud after a career almost as long as the tollroad system.

Type 'Maine Turnpike' and 'Vienna' in a Google search box and you'll see that the Turnpike delegation of five attending the IBTTA annual conference in Vienna is big news back home. The list of stories goes on for several pages. Most of them are variants of an AP story by Francis X Quinn though one or two others picked up on it separately.