CLARION – John Stroup, candidate for the vacant Congressional seat in Pennsylvania’s Fifth District, and outspoken opponent of the proposal to toll Interstate 80, reacted angrily today after reading the House Democrat’s bought and paid for “study” of tolling Interstate 80.
“Frankly,” Stroup said, “I’m amazed that Bill DeWeese had the nerve to release this.” Stroup, mayor of Clarion, has had an ongoing war of words with State Representative DeWeese since DeWeese characterized the economic impact of tolls as, “no big deal.”
“The study is one-sided and clearly flawed,” Stroup said, “but that is hardly surprising given the people who funded it. State House Democrats designed the tolling plan. They certainly wouldn’t pay for a study that said it was a bad idea.”
Stroup was one of the organizers of the I-80 toll resistance and founded a coalition of small communities that now hopes to fund a more accurate study on the subject.
“I’m only an armchair economist,” Stroup said, “but I know there is a lot more at stake here than the cursory facts this study presents. In Clarion County alone, I can point out three business parks that will be severely damaged by tolls. That will waste more than ten million dollars in public investment and at least another ten million in private dollars. These costs aren’t even mentioned in the House Democrat’s study.”
“We will lose dozens of businesses, thousands of jobs, and all of that investment will be lost – and the State will have to pay even more millions in benefits and re-training dollars to make up for the damage they plan to cause. It’s absurd. In the end, it will cost more in local investment and state benefits than tolling will ever bring in.”
Stroup pledged to carry his battle to the halls of Congress.
“I’m in this to win,” he said. “This is a federal highway, paid for once by federal tax dollars. The state promised us it would be free and we built our economy on that promise. I will not stand by idly and watch the state expropriate a federal highway and use it to economically destroy us.”
John Stroup’s campaign begins a seventeen county tour this weekend, and the candidate invites all Pennsylvanians to join him in his crusade.