Senator: Public not ready for vote on I-70 tolls

Thursday, March 8, 2012

This year’s discussion of rebuilding Interstate 70 as a toll road likely is just a discussion — not an effort to get a final bill into law, state Sen. Bill Stouffer said Wednesday.

“I do not believe the public is ready to vote on a bill like this,” Stouffer, R-Napton and chairman of the Senate’s Transportation Committee, said at the start of the committee’s third week of testimony on the proposal.

“I want to take as much testimony on this bill as is out there,” he said. “(But) I think it would be counter-productive to move it beyond here (the committee).”

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Still, Steve Schrimpf, Jefferson City landscape contractor, told committee members they should press forward with finding a way for the state transportation department to get I-70 rebuilt.