Recent headlines and excerpts:

Ethics bill passes Lynn Item

Supporters of the bill, including House Speaker Robert DeLeo, D-Winthrop, said it will begin the process of restoring the public's faith in state government.

State Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, said she is pleased the ethics reform passed.

"It's the most sweeping overhaul of state ethics in decades," she said. "It's long overdue and I'm glad to support it. Scandals grow in the darkness and this bill will shed light on the darkness."

Pike faces $400M payment after credit downgrade

LORI'S COLUMN: Swaptions: A train wreck coming down the Pike March, 2009(Marblehead Reporter, The Swampscott Reporter, Blue Mass Group and The Salem News)

Salem News: Quips and Quotes 

" Asking people to take a simple test to determine fitness to drive is a minor inconvenience that could ... save lives, perhaps even their own. "

State Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, offering her opinion on legislation that would require elderly drivers to take road tests in order to get their license renewed

Transportation wreck averted Boston Globe editorial June 19, 2009

Lawmakers OK transportation fix By Henry Collins / The Daily Item

Ehrlich said prior to the House vote Thursday that the bill represents real transportation reform.

"Clearly the many voices from the North Shore calling for toll fairness and equity were heard," she said. "This is a great moment for all citizens and especially the long-suffering toll payers of the commonwealth," she said. "This bill is a declaration that fairness and equity are bedrock principles supporting our transportation system. This bill reaffirms a simple constitutional principle that toll money should be spent on tolled roads and not on something else."

Fare and toll hikes would be staved off by increasing the sales tax from 5 percent to 6.25 percent.
Walk for Respect has new meaning for Swampscott school, Students were nearby in fatal attack in D.C.   Boston Globe by Vivian Nereim

State Representative Lori Ehrlich of Marblehead added: "That it was our children makes the ripples through our community particularly profound."

Swampscott Walk for Respect gains wide audience, participation  by George Derringer

Brigette Berman of Dover, a 15-year-old author of the book “Dorie Witt’s Guide to Surviving Bullies,” told listeners to look at the person next to them and observe that there are differences, obvious and not so obvious.

“I don’t want to like everybody, but you do need to respect them,” Berman said. “We need to make a commitment to respect and tolerance.” Later, state Rep. Lori Ehrlich praised Berman’s book.

Ehrlich was the last speaker. She thanked organizers Paula Bonazzoli and Jessica O’Gorman and quoted the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who said, “Sunlight in the best of disinfectants.”

“It’s a horrible irony that our children visiting a museum in the seat of our great democracy to remember the most heinous mass hate crime in history encounter hate first-hand,” she said. “That it was our children makes the ripples throughout our community particularly profound.”

Hatred, she said, “must be addressed when it happens and then followed with a sustained and repetitive educational effort,” then thanked the walkers for their effort, hoping their effort and enthusiasm will spread throughout the state, nation and world.

Salem News: Our view: House comes one vote shy of real reform

One vote would have made all the difference.

According to the official House roll call, Democrats John Keenan of Salem, Ted Speliotis of Danvers and Joyce Spiliotis of Peabody all voted to keep the holidays. Voting with Republicans Brad Hill of Ipswich and Brad Jones of North Reading to get rid of them were Marblehead's Lori Ehrlich, Beverly's Mary Grant and Andover's Barbara L'Italien, whose district includes one precinct in Boxford.

Arlington Advocate Senate, guv continue tango over transportation funding

Salem News: Rooking the Pawns by Alan Burke

Eagle Tribune: Senate vows to prevent toll hikes slated for July 1

LORI'S COLUMN: Toll equity: Root of the problem lost in the exhaust
Marblehead - The governor hasn't been a stranger to the North Shore, and I was delighted to welcome him to Marblehead last Thursday evening. While he was here to explain the state’s budgetary difficulties, we had an exchange over tolls, and this highlighted for me that the conversation over toll equity needs to be cleared up. With a little over a month to go until the tolls are again slated to go up, there is no time like the present.

Everyone knows that the way we collect tolls in this state is both unfair and inequitable. In fact, The Mass Turnpike’s own “Toll Equity Working Group” reported in June 2008 that “58 cents of every dollar of [Metropolitan Highway System] tolls is required to pay for CA/T [Big Dig-related] costs.” This is a sobering fact to learn while traveling through the Sumner-Callahan tunnels constructed in 1934 and 1958. The tolls for these two old and deteriorating structures as well as the newer Ted Williams tunnel are slated to increase on July 1 from $3.50 to $7.

While the gas-tax idea failed to garner the necessary support in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, there was sufficient support for a sales-tax increase, part of which ($275 million) is for transportation — more than enough to cover both the toll hike needs of the Turnpike Authority and the fare increase needs of the MBTA.

This conversation needs to focus not on revenue but on a solution. There are two fundamental issues at the root of this problem that are unfortunately getting lost in the exhaust of the conversation over which revenue source is best.

A. Toll Equity: It’s not fair to put the burden of the largest public-works project in our nation’s history on the shoulders of the long-suffering North Shore and Metro West toll payers.

B. Potential Unconstitutionality: From the beginning we enshrined separation of powers in our Constitution, specifically granting the Legislature the power to levy a tax. The Turnpike Authority is not a taxing authority. It can only charge a fee, also known as a toll, for the tolled services provided. Yet, nearly 60 cents of every toll dollar collected is not going to the Turnpike but to cover the Big Dig.

This problem doesn’t need a revenue fix. It needs to be fixed. There are three potential solutions for this that, if implemented, would be successful in not only preventing the Turnpike Authority from increasing the tolls but mandating that tolls are equitable.

1. By legislative action: As part of the House’s efforts to reform transportation, an amendment was overwhelmingly passed that would require that any toll collected in Massachusetts has to be used to service or maintain that tolled facility, not something else. I and several other determined legislators are working hard to insure that this amendment emerges from the conference committee intact. If it doesn’t, then even if the Turnpike Authority is replaced by a newly consolidated agency we will still have a situation where tollbooths remain virtual ATMs.
2. By judicial decision: A class-action lawsuit filed recently in Middlesex Superior Court is arguing the constitutional principle that a toll should never be used as a tax and seeks to stop the unconstitutional expropriation of toll money.
3. By leadership: It’s up to our elected leaders to clear away the smoke so our citizens do not confuse the fundamental requirement for toll equity with the needed discussion of how we can fairly share The Big Dig burden.

We cannot afford to continue finding ways to fund the status quo. We must take bold steps to fix problems, not merely delay them. Unless we have courageous leadership, the people will have no other option other than to reaffirm 200-year-old law or be forced to seek redress in the courts.

Rep. Lori A. Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, is a certified public accountant in her second term as a state legislator. She serves on the Joint Committee on Transportation and the Joint Committee on Revenue.

A toll on the Mass. Turnpike, for instance, is a user fee, not a tax. That limits who pays the toll to people who use the highway, but also restricts how those receipts can be spent.

The principle is a simple one: A user fee should only be used to offset the cost of providing the service it pays for. That was the operating principle of the Mass. Turnpike from the moment it was born. Toll revenue went to the Turnpike Authority, not the state's general fund, and the Turnpike Authority spent it only on the Pike.

That changed in 1997, under legislation that turned the Big Dig over to the Turnpike Authority. Suddenly, tolls that were collected on the east-west highway were being used to pay off bonds for the north-south highway — which drivers used for free. A user fee was being treated as a tax, collected from one group of citizens and spent to help another group of citizens.

According to a class-action suit filed recently in Middlesex Superior Court, the amount of money siphoned from toll-payers for purposes unrelated to the tolled road tops $300 million. The suit is an important marker, building on several precedents establishing limits on the diversion of user-fee revenue.

The political and legislative application of that principle is being tested right now, as a conference committee works to reconcile the House and Senate versions of legislation reorganizing state transportation agencies.

The House version of the bill includes language requiring that money collected as tolls can only be spent on the highway on which tolls are collected. That means tolls could continue to be collected to cover the cost of maintaining the Pike — I-90 from Logan Airport to Westfield, unless the westernmost tolls are brought back — but not to pay off bonds for the north-south section of the Big Dig, and not for any other untolled roads. The state could add new tolls on other roads, but their receipts would be subject to the same restriction.

Both transportation-reform bills eliminate the Turnpike Authority, merging it with several other transportation agencies and creating a central fund for all transportation spending. Unless the House language makes it into the final bill, the Mass. Pike toll-collecting machine could become an ATM, providing funding for roads, bridges and public transportation projects across the state.

The six-member conference committee began meeting last week, and immediately closed the door to the public and other legislators. Much is at stake in their deliberations, especially for those dependent on the Pike. Whatever bill emerges must embrace the principle that money collected on the Pike must only be spent on the tolled sections of the Pike. The civil suit is welcome insurance that if the Legislature violates that principle, the courts will have an opportunity to reinstate it.

Hundreds sign on to sue Pike over ‘illegal’ toll tax by Jessica Van Sack, Boston Herald


Under Ehrlich bill, polluters would pay for research Marblehead Reporter

Marblehead - In support of a bill called “novel” and “precedent setting,” several statewide advocates joined sponsor Rep. Lori A. Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, in testimony before the Joint Committee on Public Health last week.

Ehrlich’s bill, “An Act Relative to Pollution Health Effects Mitigation,” addresses a category of toxic chemical emissions known as “HAPs” or “Hazardous Air Pollutants,” which are not subject to Massachusetts’ power-plant regulations. These substances include certain volatile organic chemicals, pesticides, herbicides and radionuclides that present tangible hazards, based on scientific studies of exposure to humans and other mammals, according to Ehrlich.

Representative Ehrlich concluded her testimony by saying, “I encourage the committee to consider its novel approach and join me in sending a message that it’s not just trees and global warming at stake when emissions go up those stacks. It’s us.”

A New Girls’ Network: An Interview with Massachusetts State Representative Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead by The Citizen, the newspaper of Harvard's Kennedy School 

The program also taught important skills, including public speaking, fundraising, campaign management, and how to interact with the media.  And it gave me sisterhood connections. Wonderful connections. This is incredibly valuable in politics.  Instead of an old boys’ network, the Oval Office Program tapped me into the new girls’ network.

Ehrlich pushes library funding amendments by Debra Glidden, The Lynn Item

Salem State honors Marblehead's Ehrlich on Earth Day Marblehead Reporter 
Ehrlich to be honored at Salem State event by Debra Glidden, The Lynn Item

MARBLEHEAD-State Rep. Lori Ehrlich (D-Marblehead) is being honored at Salem State College this week.

Salem State College will close its weeklong celebration of Earth Day with a “Friends of the Earth” awards for local environmental activists. The Earth Day Planning Committee will honor the recipients on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in Veterans Hall at the college’s Ellison Campus Center.

As a founder of HealthLink, she brought to the forefront the health hazards posed by the Salem Power Plant and the rest of the “Filthy Five” coal burning power plants. As co-founder of the Wenham Lake Watershed Association, she helped with cleaning up the drinking-water source for 80,000 people who live in that area. Ehrlich pointed out the water from Wenham Lake used to be so pure that Queen Victoria insisted on using only ice from Wenham Lake.

“Since the mid 1950s the careless dumping of coal waste laid this irreplaceable drinking water source to waste,” she said. “This is something close to my heart. It really was a community effort that galvanized and connected 80,000 people to their drinking water.” 

(photo credit: Rep. Ehrlich's blackberry taken in the Boston Public Gardens during budget week)

‘Go Green’ growing as Saturday event approaches Marblehead Reporter

“The reforms in this bill are ambitious and long overdue,” said Ehrlich. “I am especially proud of the passage of an amendment offered by the North Shore and Metro West caucuses requiring that toll funds be strictly dedicated to the roads and bridges from which they are collected. For too long, North Shore residents have been footing the bill for remote projects while the roads we drive on fall into disrepair.”

LORI'S COLUMN: Swaptions: A train wreck coming down the Pike (Marblehead Reporter, The Swampscott Reporter, Blue Mass Group and The Salem News)

 About Lori: