Editorial: Fix the current highway fund (Greensboro News and Record)
Gov. Bev Perdue’s administration keeps working on new ideas to meet state transportation needs.
Some are better than others.
The latest proposal calls for creating a Mobility Fund, a pool of money to pay for big maintenance projects — such as replacing the Yadkin River bridges on I-85 — and even city road work. It would tap some of the revenue currently diverted from the state’s Highway Trust Fund to the General Fund and raise some taxes, including the motor vehicle registration fee.
This is a poor economic environment for raising taxes, although even fiscal conservatives must acknowledge the long-term problem with relying so heavily on the motor-fuels tax for transportation needs. People keep driving more fuel-efficient vehicles and paying less tax, while highway construction and maintenance costs are not decreasing.
The bigger question, though, is why create a Mobility Fund when the state already has a Highway Trust Fund? The easy answer is that the Highway Trust Fund isn’t adequately meeting the state’s transportation needs, but that should be addressed by correcting its problems, not coming up with a new entity that supposedly would exist within the Highway Trust Fund but operate separately.
The state can’t deal with its top maintenance priority, the Yadkin River bridges, because of the politically motivated Equity Formula that governs the spending of Highway Trust Fund dollars. Money has to be doled out evenly across the state, no matter where it’s needed most. That doesn’t allow for an allocation of $300 million in one location, even on a major artery like I-85. Perdue has had to think creatively to get started on the Yadkin River project, borrowing against future federal appropriations for the first phase.
It would be better to use the Highway Trust Fund as the state’s major transportation funding mechanism but give the Board of Transportation authority to target funds to the most urgent projects, regardless of location. The legislature should put politics aside to make that happen — an idea travelers could support.
Thursday, May 27, 2010 (Updated 3:00 am)
