110 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

Q. Governor, you said in your opening statement that it is foolhardy
for any outside group to block the priority bill. Do you know of any
specific group that attempted to do this?

A. Well, I was thinking more of a legislative individual, Mr. Kelly.
Q. Who is that?

A. Well, obviously Congressman Long has a long record of trying
to impede the efficient operation of the State Roads Commission. I
sincerely wish he would confine himself to Federal legislation, which is
really the reason he's in office and he's been obstructing and stimu-
lating discord in these areas for as long as I can remember. Obviously
he does run from Baltimore County and I'm sure he thinks it's a
very popular position to advocate the northern crossing for that pur-
pose. But his irresponsibility in the way he approaches the question
is almost unbelievable. Governor Tawes before me had the same diffi-
culty with him. So this is not a partisan consideration. He said pub-
licly the other day that the Bay Bridge situation was the reason the
tax program was being enacted. And you would think that a United
States Congressman would have a greater knowledge of fiscal matters
in the State. Obviously bridges are built with tolls and not with tax
money.

Q. Governor, some members of the General Assembly have said that
they regard the question of the bridge location as at least partly a
political decision to be made and not entirely an engineering decision
because it has a great impact upon the economic development of
whatever community it is going directly to link. Have you any ob-
servation on that?

A. Yes. I regard it neither as a political decision nor as an engineer-
ing decision. Principally I regard it as a financial decision because we
all know that toll facilities have to be constructed with a sound finan-
cial probability of the return of the toll money to amortize the bonds.
And the traffic count, of course that's basically an engineering deter-
mination, will have to determine whether the money will be forth-
coming to liquidate the indebtedness properly or whether it won't.
And regardless of how important it is to open up a new area in-
dustrially, you can't build a bridge with bond money supported by
tolls if the money is not going to be there to amortize those loans.
Now if such a bridge were to be constructed with general fund
money and not with tolls, we might arrive at a different conclusion,
but that has never been done in our State and as far as I know hasn't
been done in many states.