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For nearly three hours Thursday, lawmakers peppered the state’s Department of Transportation and Crescent City Connection Division about how it spends its money, much of it coming from drivers who pay tolls crossing the bridge.
“Instead of asking for more money or more tolls, cut the fat,” Rep. Pat Connick, R-Marerro, said. “There's so much fat in this thing. It's disgusting.”
Since the 1990s, the Crescent City Connection Division has collected almost $200 million in tolls, but lawmakers said little of it has gone to 13 state mandated projects such as the extension of Peters Road or improvements on Barataria Blvd. and Terry Parkway.
“It is my belief that the people who put those projects in there intended for them to be done at some point,” Rep. Walt Leger, D-New Orleans, said.
Answered Randy Plaisant, the assistant director of the CCC Division, “I believe they put it in there because it was expedient and to generate the votes they needed to pass it.”
Instead, lawmakers said Thursday that some of the toll money – more than $3 million – was spent on fixing up the division’s offices.
“Why wasn’t that money used to build a project on Barataria Blvd. or General de Gaulle?,” Connick asked.
“Those are different projects,” Paisant said.
“But we sit in traffic every morning,” Connick responded. “People backed up, wasting gas and money. But you are fixing offices instead of projects the legislature tells you to do.”
The focus of Thursday’s meeting was to study the CCCD’s budget and spending. But some of the questions were further reaching, with some lawmakers wondering if the state would be better off eliminating the CCCD.
“I would like for you to study and see why we need the Crescent City Connection (Division),” Rep. Mert Smiley, R-Port Vincent, said. “I don't think we need it. I think the state of Louisiana could do this without the second level of bureaucracy we have.”
That’s an idea the state’s new secretary of transportation told lawmakers he will consider and study and report back to the committee at a later date.
Lawmakers also questioned why the division collects $22 million a year in tolls and spends almost 70 percent of that money on salaries with much of the rest being used to run the ferries.
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