PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- State officials trying to avoid a funding crisis centered on the state's big bridges are considering putting a toll on the Sakonnet River Bridge after all, but a trivial one, perhaps 10 cents.
That figure would serve to keep the state from being foreclosed from tolling the bridge at all under federal rules, the officials believe.
A nominal toll, state Turnpike and Bridge Authority Chairman David Darlington said, wouldn't pay the authority's bills, but it would apparently preserve the right to collect tolls on the new bridge.
A toll, even such a minimal one, would also be a second 180-degree turnabout in the space of a year for the General Assembly on how to pay for the upkeep of the new Sakonnet bridge and the other three bridges the authority operates.
A year ago, the General Assembly transferred the new bridge from the state Department of Transportation to the authority and gave it the ability to collect tolls on it.The authority expected to use the money to help maintain the Mount Hope Bridge, the Jamestown Bridge and the Pell Bridge.
What followed was a political uprising in the East Bay, where businesses and residents bitterly opposed the idea.
After a vigorous lobbying campaign at the State House, legislators reversed course and amended the state budget for this fiscal year to bar tolls on the Sakonnet and toll increases on the Pell.
That caused consternation at the authority, which objected that it has promised its bondholders that, among other things, it would be able to raise tolls on the Pell Bridge to cover possible increases in the cost of maintaining the bridge.
The Department of Transportation, meanwhile, has warned that if the Sakonnet Bridge is officially completed before the state starts collecting tolls on it, the state could be barred permanently from collecting them. Traffic went on the bridge last September, so "completed" has become a somewhat elastic term and the date it will happen remains undefined.