turnpike

Paul Violette's lawyer says the longtime head of the Maine Turnpike is prepared to plead guilty to charges by the state attorney-general of thievery amounting to some $10,000 so long as the state doesn't ask for more than five years in jail - an eight year sentence with five years to be served. The charges carry a maximum of ten years served in jail.

His lawyer says he wants to "get this behind him."

Paul Violette, the 23-year executive director of the Maine Turnpike now has a criminal charge to face - felony theft of gift cards, travel, meals and other personal indulgences on the Turnpike's account. The AP is reporting this from the state attorney-general's office. A spokesman is quoted as saying the charge specifies thievery of "more than $10,000."

Apparently Violette is pleading guilty.

Republican candidate for governor of West Virginia Bill Maloney says the state needs to look at selling the Turnpike or putting it out to the private sector on a longterm lease. "We need to think differently than we have before. I don't have all the answers, but there are a lot of people with answers," he told the Beckley Register-Herald recently.

"We need to look at other states and see what they have done," Maloney said.

Maine's governor Paul LePage has backed away from previous statements that the Maine Turnpike should be folded into the state DOT and the Turnpike Authority abolished. He said in public appearances Friday that although there would be short-term advantages in abolition, its continuation would benefit economic development.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett is moving very slowly to assert control at the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but acted decisively this week at the Delaware River toll bridge authority where he fired all six Democrat appointed commissioners and installed six of his own. Following a precedent set by his predecessor Ed Rendell, Corbett also put himself onto the board.

1    AN ACT concerning the collection of tolls by the New Jersey
2    Turnpike    Authority    and    supplementing    P .L.1948,    c.454
3    (C.27:23-1 et seq.).
4
5    BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and General Assembly of the State
6    of New Jersey:
7

Maryland DOT's Melinda Peters got recognition this week from Engineering News Record magazine as tops in her business. She's project director for the largest new tollroad under construction in the country, Maryland's Inter County Connector, first segment of which will open within weeks.

Jan 11 the Newport Turnpike Company was granted permission by the Delaware governor "to erect tollgates" according to the Dover Post newspaper. That was Jan 11 1823. The early decades of the 19th century saw heavy investments in private tollroads and turnpikes.

A transport lobby group in Maine is suggesting that portions of the interstate highway system south of Augusta be transferred to the Maine Turnpike Authority, and that the long hoped-for east-west highway across the state be investor-developed.

Says Maine Better Transportation Association's recently released paper titled "Transportation: the Case for Investment":