On the issue of tolling Interstate 80 in order to raise bridge and road revenue — plus shore up money for mass transportation in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter said he is taking a hands-off stand.

Specter, R-Pa., said at a town hall meeting at Thiel College on Monday that Pennsylvania legislators and not Washington, D.C., politicians should decide the fate of the interstate.

There are 510 congressmen who are not from the commonwealth, he said, adding, “I would leave it up to the state of Pennsylvania to decide (whether to toll I-80).”

Specter met applause from the audience on that and other issues as he took almost 30 questions in the crowded lecture room in Howard Miller Student Center.

The plan to toll I-80 would provide nearly $1 billion a year for highway and bridge repairs, plus pour money into mass transit in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It calls for more than $13 billion in borrowing by the state Turnpike Commission. Tolls would take a decade to put in place and must be approved by the federal Department of Transportation.

U.S. Reps. Phil English, Erie, R-3rd District, and John Peterson, Titusville, R-5th District, have pushed legislation aimed at stopping the tolling plan on the federal level.

Among those plans are an amendment to a transportation bill that would ban the use of federal money for placing tolls on the interstate and another bill that would use the tax code to pull state money raised by the tolls and shift it all into a federal program that helps workers whose jobs are moved overseas.

The amendment will have to survive the Senate and the conference report that reconciles the Senate and House versions of the bill and the toll tax must get through a Democrat-controlled Congress.

The crowd brought forward questions and criticisms on Iraq, immigration, wire-tapping, funding for diseases, education, and health care. “You are all political activists by being here,” Specter said.

He told the crowd the purpose of the meetings was to take the temperature of the public. He said they were running a temperature of “about 213 degrees” on immigration and the embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and “about 250 degrees” on Iraq.

Specter said he would wait for a September report from Gen. David Petraeus. If there is no light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq by then, he said a policy change was in order.

He emphasized stiffer penalties on businesses which hire illegal immigrants and a registration policy that would come down harder on unscrupulous employers who abuse those workers.