Bills would transfer secondary road maintenance to counties or cities
By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun
[email protected]
Apr 4, 2009
DURHAM — Legislators have introduced three bills in the General Assembly that would force cities or counties to take responsibility for maintaining thousand of miles of road now controlled by the N.C. Department of Transportation.
One of the two bills, introduced by state Sen. Clark Jenkins, D-Edgecombe, would shift the job to cities and was drafted by officials at DOT. The agency is supporting the measure, said Jon Nance, its chief engineer for operations.
The other bill, sponsored by two Mecklenburg County legislators, Republican Sen. Bob Rucho and Democratic Sen. Dan Clodfelter, calls for assigning maintenance to counties in 2011.
The switch in each case would target so-called secondary roads — essentially, those outside the interstate or numbered U.S. and N.C. route systems.
Rucho said his bill would affect about 64,000 miles of the roughly 79,000 miles of roads DOT now maintains. Included in the switch to counties he and Clodfelter are proposing would be in-city roads the state now maintains.
Jenkins' bill targets in-city DOT-controlled roads only and, thanks to the way it defines roads eligible for state maintenance, in some cases would force the state to take over roads now belonging to cities, said Mark Ahrendsen, Durham city transportation manager.
But the measure's net effect would be to reduce DOT's maintenance burden. In Durham, the city government would likely add 60 to 70 miles of road to its already backlogged maintenance program when the switch Jenkins proposes takes effect in 2015.
State Rep. Nelson Cole, D-Rockingham, introduced a parallel bill in the N.C. House that echoes the Jenkins/DOT proposal.
Rucho and Nance said the idea is to pare DOT's responsibilities so it can focus on the upkeep of the state's major highways.
Because DOT is responsible for so much road mileage now, “the system is failing, OK?” Rucho said. “If you look back on some of the other states that are doing this, the one that are doing it well are doing it mainly by focusing on the primary road system. We're about $600 million a year in the hole on keeping up with our maintenance.”
Nance added that assigning more roads to local control would give local leaders more say over their design, allowing them leeway to add amenities like sidewalks.
But lobbyists for cities and counties across the state are already raising objections, mostly financial. They say local governments are no more able than DOT to shoulder the burden.
N.C. Metropolitan Coalition Director Julie White noted that the state took responsibility for the upkeep of secondary roads when local-government finances collapsed during the Great Depression.
“It's ironic that now in the midst of what's seen as another Great Depression, the decision [could be] made to transfer the roads back,” she said.
She added that if cities have to devote property tax revenue to the job, massive inequities would result. Because many of the people who travel secondary roads in their jurisdictions come from rural areas or other communities, they wouldn't have to shoulder a share of the bill.
Rucho and Nance said the intent of the two plans is for the state to subsidize part of the cost, by expanding existing transfer payments to cities or as Rucho proposes by channeling money to counties from the state's own highway funds.
White, however, believes the subsidies wouldn't cover the full cost of upkeep. She also noted that the Jenkins bill expands the state's power to withhold payments when budgets are tight.
The possibility of a maintenance off-load figured in the work of a legislative study panel that finished its work last winter. The group dropped the idea after city interests objected.
But supporters of the idea hinted at the time it would likely resurface.
Gov. Beverly Perdue has since made one of its leading advocates, former Jenkins aide Jim Trogdon, DOT's chief operating officer. She also signed off on a budget proposal that calls for slashing state spending on road maintenance.
