House budget would start Perdue’s Mobility Fund with $70M (News and Observer)
The 2011 budget approved by the House this morning provides $70 million to start up the N.C. Mobility Fund that Gov. Bev Perdue wants for some big statewide transportation projects that, with one exception, have not been named.
This will be one of the areas for negotiation with the Senate, which did not include the Mobility Fund in its budget proposal.
It isn’t new money, as Perdue had proposed (she wanted $74.6 million in DMV fee hikes). It’s all diverted from the Highway Trust Fund via two routes:
* a $31 million slice of the yearly transfer from the Highway Trust Fund to the General Fund. The legislature has been reducing this transfer by chipping away chunks to cover revenue gaps on turnpike projects — the expected shortfall in toll collections needed to cover the full project costs.
The House budget leaves $40 million remaining in this shift to the general fund. In FY 2012 it proposes to reduce that further to $26 million by reserving an additional $14 million a year for the Mobility Fund.
* $39 million in gap funding unspent by the N.C. Turnpike Authority — it had been
earmarked to help pay for two toll projects that weren’t ready to get
started this year.
Why not simply leave this money in the good old Highway Trust Fund? Because it would be subject to the equity formula there, which distributes the cash according to geography and population numbers. The Mobility Fund is not subject to the equity formula, so it’s OK to spend a lot of money in one county without robbing other projects nearby.
Legislators don’t appear ready to change or kill the equity formula, but maybe they’re ready to acknowledge that it has prevented the state from addressing some of its biggest transportation needs.
How will the money be spent? Every time somebody talks about the Mobility Fund, starting with Perdue’s first mention (here’s the official version from her NCDOT) and continuing through variations in the House, there’s a different list of priorities.
Everybody agrees that the first share will go for widening Interstate 85 near the Yadkin River bridge (which has languished because of equity formula dynamics). There have been proposals to earmark some of the loot for interstate maintenance, for city streets and other needs.
The new House budget prefers an open-ended approach. After I-85 is fixed at the Yadkin bridge, it says, there would be lots of local and statewide consulting involved in selecting transportation projects “of statewide and regional significance that relieve congestion and enhance mobility across all modes of transportation.”
In other words, almost anything could qualify for this modest pot of money. It’ll be good to fix that stretch of I-85. After that, it’s hard to get excited.
Submitted by BruceSiceloff on 06/04/2010 – 14:43
