Editorial: Mobility Fund still has life (Salisbury Post)
Mayors from around the state flanked Gov. Beverly Perdue last week as she urged state House members to help create the Mobility Fund to pay for major road projects, starting with the I-85 bridge over the Yadkin Bridge.
Missing were the mayors of Salisbury and Lexington, the cities closest to the bridge. But don’t read that as a non-endorsement. Salisbury Mayor Susan Kluttz and Lexington Mayor John T. Walser say they’re all for a new fund to tackle highway projects like the Yadkin River bridge that have statewide significance. How to raise the money for the fund is another matter — one they’re happy to leave to the General Assembly to figure out. Neither has taken a stand on the increased vehicle fees the governor proposed for the fund.
They may not need to. The governor and the mayors kept working on House members. Late in the week, a posting on the N.C. Metro Mayors Association website said “word is spreading” that the House budget will include Mobility Fund (the Senate’s did not), but without the DMV fee increases. That improves the fund’s chances of survival. But where will the money come from?
Because of that persistent question, legislators have been cool to the Mobility Fund, but it’s not dead yet. Some have said the Mobility Fund would be unnecessary if the Department of Transportation would stop tapping the road-building Highway Trust Fund to pump money into the General Fund for other purposes. Until a few years ago, the transfer was $172 million a year.
That is indeed part of Perdue’s solution. The legislature voted in 2007 to phase out the transfer by 2013. Perdue wants $22 million of the “phase-out” to go to the Mobility Fund in the coming year. That’s a start, but still far short of the more than $90 million Perdue wanted the fund to start with.
The other weakness in North Carolina transportation funding is the equity formula used to divvy up highway money. Yes, that process needs to change, but projects like the Yadkin River bridge go beyond the regional scope of the equity formula. The bridge is not a local project; it affects a major East Coast traffic corridor — much as Interstate 95 does. Virginia wants to fund I-95 improvements with a toll rather than its existing funding mechanisms. Perdue appears to be turning over every possible funding rock in search of ways to avoid putting a toll on the I-85 bridge.
Keep looking, governor. The mayors and the people they represent are behind your Mobility Fund. They don’t know how on earth you’ll put it together, but they are behind you.
