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SAKONNET AREA The state cant afford to properly care for its roads and bridges and needs the estimated $27 million that tolling the new Sakonnet River Bridge might provide each year.

So says Michael P. Lewis, director of the state Department of Transportation, who visited this newspaper last week to defend the toll proposal.

Governor Lincoln Chafees 2013 budget includes a plan that would hand over the Sakonnet River and Jamestown-Verrazzano bridges to the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority and allow RITBA to place tolls on the Sakonnet span when it is finished.

He is aware that people in this corner of the state feel strongly about the subject, Mr. Lewis said, but the state has about run out of transportation funding options.

We dont have the money, plain and simple, to maintain our bridges, he said. And he predicted that, with the present climate in Washington, the situation will only get worse. There isnt a status quo option. Without tolls, the day the new bridge opens, we wont be able to adequately maintain it it will go the way of the old Sakonnet Bridge.

The administration is pushing the toll issue now because there is a window of opportunity that will close forever in about 12 months, he said. Once the new bridge is complete and the old one removed (the Coast Guard permit requires that the old bridge be gone within 18 months after the new bridge is done), it will be too late to add tolls.

Mr. Lewis said the DOT thinks the Sakonnet River Bridge is the best candidate for tolls in part because it sees one-and-a-half times more traffic than the Newport Bridge. He said there would be no need for toll booths since tolling could be automatic.

Local lawmakers have already pledged to fight tolls either on the Sakonnet River Bridge or the Mount Hope Bridge. Rep. Raymond E. Gallison Jr., Rep. John G. Edwards and Sen. Walter S. Felag Jr. introduced bills earlier this year aimed at preventing the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority from instituting tolls on the Mount Hope and Sakonnet River bridges.

And Senator Louis DiPalma told the Senate Finance Committee recently that another toll would isolate Aquideck Island and hit county businesses hard.

Mr. Lewis acknowledged that people in Newport and Bristol counties believe it is unfair to toll only bridges here while their tax dollars have assisted projects throughout the state like the Iway.

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DOT chief pushes Sakonnet Bridge toll