Given The Day’s April 16 editorial supporting tolls, I can only assume the editorial board is unaware of some extremely important developments that have happed in the last 10 days – announcements by the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont that dramatically undermine the fundamental assumptions underlying the “need” for tolls.

The argument for tolls rests on a simple proposition: fixing transportation in Connecticut requires far more money than current revenue streams provide. Underlying this statement are three assumptions: (1) former Governor Malloy’s unvetted, record-breaking $100 billion infrastructure “aspirational list” (to use Democrat Senator Leone’s description) represents the needed spending; (2) the so-called “disappearing” (Lamont’s words) motor fuels tax collections are in fact disappearing; and (3) no additional financial assistance can be expected from the federal government, which historically had subsidized up to 80 percent of transportation infrastructure spending.

Official data on the Department of Revenue Services website belie the “disappearing” fuel tax argument. Official government records show motor fuel taxes are not disappearing, but in fact exhibit a modest upward long-term trend. Collections were about $650 million for fiscal-year 2005 and $822 million for 2018.

Now, at two events — one on April 8 and the other on April 10 — the Lamont administration has fatally undermined the other two premises, by effectively admitting that the infrastructure spending was grossly inflated and the federal aid grossly underestimated. Those confessions should end the tolls debate.

On April 8, during the Finance Committee Transportation Bonding Committee meeting, the DOT commissioner and his staff destroyed Malloy’s pie-in-the-sky infrastructure spending that was the basis for the projected State Transportation Fund deficits. Responding to a question about how much infrastructure spending was needed to get our transportation systems back in shape, the commissioner and his staff stated that $2 billion annual infrastructure spending would be “the best-case scenario to achieve a state of good repair.”

Spending $2 billion a year would represent a 40 percent cut to Malloy’s $100 billion 30-year wish list. The implications for the projected STF deficit are a monumental and welcomed relief to taxpayers.

And the good news of an enormous reduction in the cost of restoring Connecticut’s transportation system was complemented by the governor’s announcement on April 10 that he had a very successful meeting with the secretary of the U. S. Department of Transportation, Elaine Chao. The governor was eager to share the good news that a new federal transportation system funding program means billions of dollars of transportation infrastructure spending will be eligible for an 80 percent federal subsidy.

This has major implications for the tolls debate, since all the forecasted STF deficits were predicated on zero increases in federal subsidies. In other words, the STF deficits assumed all increased transportation infrastructure spending would be paid 100 percent by Connecticut taxpayers. It doesn’t take a degree in economics to understand that federal subsidies of as much as $800 million for every $1 billion of state infrastructure spending will reduce the financial burden on Connecticut by a whopping amount.

The combination of billions of dollars of reduced infrastructure spending necessary to get our transportation system into a state of good repair with the restoration of billions of dollars of traditional federal subsidies will save our state far more than the projected revenues from any toll scenario.

The Lamont administration has themselves proven that there is no need for tolls to pay for necessary transportation infrastructure spending. If tolls are passed, the real reason will be to hit Connecticut taxpayers with another massive tax disguised as an unavoidable necessity. But the real reason will be to divert resources to the General Fund to pay for the legislature’s failure to cut spending.

Trust the numbers, not the rhetoric: We don’t need tolls, and the governor just proved it — even if he doesn’t understand the implications of the important facts he himself has announced.

Len Suzio is a former state senator. He served as vice chair of the Transportation Committee.