The governor and his fellow Democrats are crafting a plan now centered on tolling only trucks, acknowledging that charging fees on cars was a political nightmare. And while officials did increase the state’s minimum wage, tolling passenger cars would have followed an array of smaller tax and fee increases lawmakers dumped on low-to-middle income families last spring — in part to accommodate Lamont’s push not to raise income tax rates on the wealthy. Several of the proposed toll gantries — not surprisingly — were focused on heavily populated and heavily traveled areas, urban centers where poverty is a major issue.
CT’s wealth inequality remains a looming obstacle to tolling cars