Do I ever have a deal for you! I have a fabulous gift at a great price for you to buy. If you have been paying attention, I have told you numerous times that this is just what you need. First, send me $1100. I will tell you what it is after the poohbahs on Smith Hill allow me to give it to you. I will then tell you where the locations are in the state where you can pick it up—after the federal government has given its imprimatur and after I commission a study where the best locations for pick-up are and of course, after I secure financing for your present.

I doubt whether many of you would buy into my proposal. Yet, this is precisely the scenario laid out by the Raimondo administration regarding the “RhodeWorks” truck toll plan. Understandably, all of you would like to know what the details of the plan are and no entity more so than the Rhode Island Trucking Association, whose members will be directly impacted by the “plan”. The $1.1 billion for financing road repairs could equate to $1100 per person or some portion thereof to pay for the bond—if the proposal doesn’t raise the necessary revenue from tolls. So, every citizen has a right to vet the plan by knowing the details. The public also has the right to compare it with other proposals including those tendered by other groups.

Yet, the governor is playing a political game. Keep the details from the masses until it’s too late to stop the momentum. Pretend that most of the details aren’t worked out.

This secrecy is abhorrent. The facts are that the taxpayers have paid for the level 2 Traffic Collection report, for the employees or contractors who generated the data used in the study methodology of traffic counts, and for the identification of the tolling spots in the study entitled "The Economic Impact of Rhode Works: An Accelerated Transportation Restoration Plan report".  If the facts are as compelling as the Raimondo administration makes them out to be, then the citizens will be allies, not obstructionists.

Instead, the public is being treated like a child. You are to be seen but not heard. Leave it up to the brain trust on Smith Street to make all the decisions, since you are too immature to make them for yourself. You have to be tricked into a decision, since you are incapable of making a good one.

The stonewalling by the governor, though her spokeswoman, does not bode well. It reminds the public of its outlay of more than $6 million dollars to private companies for promoting administration-favored projects, and the about $4 million for public relations. How ironic it is that the justification for the multiplication of “spokespersons” in government is to provide information to the public when the reality is that their jobs too often are obfuscation and spinning the facts.

It’s long overdue for governor Gina Raimondo to board the transparency train. She can begin by surrendering the documents requested by the Trucking Association in its public records request. Now is the time for the public to see the facts—not rhetoric.

Arlene Violet is an attorney and former Rhode Island Attorney General.