Local officials please mobility fund in N.C. budget draft (Durham Herald Sun)
DURHAM — Local officials are pleased that N.C. House members included in their draft of the state’s fiscal 2010-11 budget a version of the “mobility fund” Gov. Beverly Perdue wants to set up to underwrite major road and transit projects.
House members would seed the fund with $160 million over the coming four fiscal years, drawing it in part from an existing and so-far untapped subsidy for toll-road construction.
As Perdue asked, they’ve assigned first dibs on the money to the planned replacement of Interstate 85’s Yadkin River bridge at the border of Rowan and Davidson counties. But the House didn’t go along with Perdue’s request for vehicle-fee increases to help pay for it.
Local officials were happy because the budget bill includes a provision that says that once the N.C. Department of Transportation finishes the Yadkin bridge, major transit projects that would qualify for state construction subsidies should receive preferential consideration for a share of the fund.
Especially with that stipulation, “it’s encouraging it’s back in,” said Mayor Bill Bell, who said he has asked city administrators to pass the word to Durham’s legislative delegation that he’d like to see the mobility fund receive “strong consideration” as the budget moves to a House/Senate conference.
Bell, who chairs the N.C. Metropolitan Mayors Coalition, added that he and other city-government leaders around the state also want legislators to get behind Perdue’s request for mobility-fund earmarks for repairs to interstates and in-town roads.
Lobbying is necessary because the N.C. Senate’s initial draft of the budget didn’t include the mobility fund. Bell’s group and business interests have been helping Perdue and DOT push for the measure.
Triangle Transit General Manager David King joined Bell in praising the House decision.
“It’s a great thing, but not just for transit,” King said, noting that the key feature of Perdue’s initiative is that the new fund would bypass the “equity formula” that has divvied up road money among urban and rural regions since the late 1980s.
Critics of the formula say it has shortchanged congestion-plagued urban areas, while making it all but impossible for DOT to finance major, high-cost initiatives like the Yadkin bridge replacement in rural areas without shutting down other transportation projects in them for several years.
“The equity formula was a very noble attempt to make sure everybody felt they were getting their fair share,” King said. “But there are roads and projects that supercede everything.”
The Yadkin bridge — a key link on the highway that connects Washington, D.C., with Atlanta — had become the poster child for the equity formula’s deficiencies, he said.
It’s “obviously a high-priority project,” King said. “The inability to do that within the equity formula is just jarring in this day and age.”
But the House’s move didn’t come without controversy. Supporters of the mobility fund had to fend off an amendment by state Rep. Ric Killian, R-Mecklenburg, that would have shut it down after completion of the Yadkin bridge or on July 1, 2014, whichever came first.
The Killian amendment fell by a vote of 81-34 against. All but two of the Democrats who voted wanted to keep the fund going post-Yadkin. Republicans were split. Most lined up behind Killian, but House Minority Leader Paul Stam, D-Wake, and 17 other GOP members joined Democrats in voting against establishing a sunset date for the fund.
By Ray Gronberg
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