-By Warner Todd Huston
Say, wouldn’t it be nice not to have to pay any tolls when you are driving to work each day, or as you are running errands, or starting a vacation trip? Well, if you want to get out of paying tolls like all the other poor schlubs around you on the roadways, get a job with the tollway authority. Do that and your tolls are on the house… they may even throw in a car!
The Chicago Trib did an investigation and found out that more than 90% of the tollway’s work force gets free tolls. Not only that but 55 of its “critical” execs get free cars to go along with their free tolls.
And the cost?
The two perks cost the tollway hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, from covering employees’ free I-PASS transponders to maintaining and insuring the dozens of vehicles, including 12 SUVs, personally used by top staffers.
Guess who is paying for that, folks? If you drive or pay taxes, YOU are.
Granted there are employees that travel from toll station to toll station during a day’s work. Granted there are maintenance people doing this too. No one would be against these sort of travelling employees getting free transponders. But maintenance folks will be driving work vehicles, (like trucks, etc.) won’t they?
Still, would the folks that do so much travelling on a daily basis constitute 90% of the work force? No one with a lick of sense would assume that!
No one that is just driving to work and back should get out of paying tolls the rest of us have to pay.
I do have to give the tollway props on one thing, though. According to this report, Illinois politicians do not get free i-pass transponders for free tolls. At least that is a good thing. Let’s hope our state bigwigs didn’t see the Trib report that Indiana pols do get free transponders from their tollway authority! Our crooks in office don’t need to get any ideas.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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