Press Releases and Newsletters
Mayors back governor’s plan for new roads fund (WFAE)
Mayors back governor’s plan for new roads fund (WFAE)
Governor Perdue and members of the NC Metropolitan Mayors Coalition held a rally today in support of a new plan to deal with road problems. The money would come from drivers paying more at the DMV, and that has state lawmakers stepping on the brakes.
Governor Perdue’s proposal is a partial solution to a complaint metropolitan mayors have had for a long time: They say the formula the state uses to dole out transportation money forces cities with major freeways to spend most of their allotment taking care of those roads, rather than building new ones or dealing with smaller projects.
The governor’s new “Mobility Fund” would pay for maintaining and improving major state roads on a regional level and wouldn’t cut into the money cities get through the regular transportation formula.
Concord Mayor Scott Padgett points to repaving that was done recently on sections of I-85 in Cabarrus County.
“If that money had come out of this fund than it would not count against us on the equity formula,” says Padgett.
Governor Perdue estimates the Mobility Fund would raise $95 million next year – mostly by adding $7 to the cost of registering a car at the DMV. The first project on the list to be funded would be the Yadkin River Bridge, which failed to qualify for federal stimulus dollars. After that, the Mobility Fund would be open to any road, rail, port, transit or air project of statewide or regional significance.
But state lawmakers have so far been reluctant to embrace the proposal.
The Senate did not include the Mobility Fund in its draft budget. Metropolitan mayors and Governor Perdue hope the House will change that when it completes the budget.
Representative Bill Current of Gastonia says the idea of raising fees is a problem.
“At this particular time I really question raising taxes on anything,” says Current. “But it may be a great idea, I just don’t know whether the timing is right to be considering it.”
Representative Current is on the subcommittee that would have to approve the Mobility Fund for the House budget. He says any major changes to transportation funding would be a challenge this year, since it’s a short session for the General Assembly.
Julie Rose
Monday May 24, 2010
Political Landscape in North Carolina
Hunter Bacot’s presentation on the political landscape in North Carolina going into the fall 2010 election season. Presented at the NC Chamber’s Governmental Affairs Conference.
Cooper lends support to collecting DNA at arrest (News and Observer)
Cooper lends support to collecting DNA at arrest (News and Observer)
Attorney General Roy Cooper says collecting DNA from suspects when they are arrested for felonies would save lives and prevent sexual assaults from ever happening.
“It’s something we must do to protect the public,” Cooper told a House committee Tuesday morning.
The committee is considering a bill that would require law enforcement officers to take DNA from cheek swabs from people arrested for violent crimes as well as felonies and some misdemeanors. Identifying markers from the DNA would be added to a database and kept unless and until the suspect is acquitted or cleared of the charge.
Currently, DNA is collected from anyone convicted of a felony offense or certain assault-related crimes. Appeals courts have upheld similar laws in other states.
Opponents say collecting DNA at arrest amounts to an unconstitutional search of someone who is presumed innocent.
Cooper cited the case of Robert Pratt, who was accused of kidnapping and trying to rape a Cary real estate agent in 1998. After that arrest, authorities were able to connect him to a 1995 case in which three hikers, two men and one woman, were held at gunpoint in Duke Forest. The woman was raped. Cooper said that Pratt had been arrested in 1997 for assault. Had his DNA been taken then, authorities could have connected him to the Duke Forest case sooner, and the 1998 kidnapping might never have occurred.
“DNA collection on arrest will save lives,” said state Rep. Wil Neumann, a Gaston County Republican and one of the bill’s primary sponsors.
Neumann said DNA is the fingerprint of the 21st century. He noted that the bill has broad support from law enforcement authorities and groups.
It has strong opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union.
“It’s really an end-run around constitutional protections,” said Sarah Preston, a lobbyist for the ACLU of North Carolina.
People who are charged with a crime are presumed innocent and taking a biological sample without a warrant is an illegal search, she said.
DNA includes much more information about a person than identity. All manner of family information, predispositions, disease vulnerability and other characteristics are in contained in a sample. And while authorities say that they only plan to use basic identifying information, there’s no guarantee that government won’t decide later to use more of the information it has been collecting.
The bill is scheduled for another committee hearing later this week.
Read more: http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/cooper_lends_support_to_collecting_dna_at_arrest#ixzz0oxsN4LRZ
Submitted by bniolet on 2010-05-25 13:42
Mobility Fund Update 5.24.10
While the Governor and mayors held a press conference in support of the NC Mobility Fund just hours before, the House leadership just announced they do not plan include the Fund in their budget.
We are asking that you register your support for the NC Mobility Fund by sending your comments to the NC House via the website they have created to hear from you. Click here to complete the form and note that you support the House including the NC Mobility Fund in their budget.
We need to encourage as many people as possible to register their support of the Fund through the House’s website. Please ask all your council members, staff, family, neighbors, and friends to go to the website and ask the House to include the Mobility Fund in the budget.
Here are the talking points:
Need: North Carolina needs additional transportation resources that focus on mobility projects of statewide significance.
Solution: The Mobility Fund needs to be created this year, even if only with limited funding. Let’s get the Fund started.
Project Selection: The first project should be the Yadkin River Bridge. While the bridge is being built NCDOT can lead a prioritization process much like they have done over the last year for highway projects. We have confidence in NCDOT to partner with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure a data driven process that will target the Mobility Fund resources at projects of statewide significance that affect mobility.
Risk: Don’t just fix the Yadkin River Bridge without creating the Mobility Fund. Create the Fund and designate the Bridge as the first project.
The website is only accepting comments through tomorrow, so register your thoughts quickly.
Mobility Fund DOA in House? (Progressive Pulse)
Mobility Fund DOA in House? (Progressive Pulse)
Posted at 6:06 PM by Stephen Jackson
Representative Nelson Cole, House Transportation Appropriations Sub-committee Co-chair said in a meeting of that sub-committee today that, ‘Now is not the time to burden our citizens with more taxes.” He intonated that this was a feeling shared by a senior Appropriations chair.
This would appear to strongly suggest that the Governor’s Mobility Fund, one that relies heavily on DMV fee increases (especially a registration fee increase of 25%) and the scrapping of the sales tax net-of-trade exemption for used vehicles, is facing a steep uphill battle to gain traction in the House.
The rebuff at the 4pm meeting followed the Governor’s presser at 2.30 where a line of mayors and DOT Board members stood quietly as Perdue implored the House to take up her Mobility Fund proposal in the name of jobs and economic development.
Perdue admitted that the Fund was a response to the federal government not doing something about the I-85 bridge over the Yadkin River, but stressed that it was also a Fund that could address rural project needs and critical projects.
The notion that the Fund would focus on strategic projects appeared to be at odds with the proposal to direct 6.5% of the Fund to municipalities for use under Powell bill rules. Those rules allow municipalities to spend the dollars on projects as minor as sidewalks. In addition, $30 million would be used for interstate maintenance.
In questions from the press, Secretary Conti acknowledged that the capacity of existing funds that could pay for the Yadkin River Bridge project’s various phases were ‘encumbered by various formulas’. He added that the distribution of dollars around the state was an issue that required a longer conversation. Conti was referring to the equity formula of the Highway Trust Fund.
Doubt greets Perdue’s ‘mobility fund’ (News and Observer)
Doubt greets Perdue’s ‘mobility fund’ (News and Observer)
Gov. Bev Perdue is pushing legislators to include a new transportation fund in the state budget, but they’re reluctant to go along.
The Senate did not include the new spending in its budget, and its future in the House is uncertain.
Perdue wants to use the fund to replace the antique and narrow Yadkin River Bridge and to pay for other big state transportation projects. On Monday, she invited mayors from around the state to join her at a news conference to lobby for the fund, saying a healthy transportation network is important to economic development.
Perdue proposes to create the so-called N.C. Mobility Fund mostly from increases in car registration fees. She said lawmakers should get over their reluctance to raise fees in an election year.
Businesses don’t base their decisions on where to locate or grow based on DMV fees, Perdue said, but “they will walk away if the infrastructure doesn’t meet their needs.”
Legislators aren’t the only ones objecting. The N.C. Automobile Dealers Association opposes the plan. Under Perdue’s proposal, car buyers would no longer be able to deduct the value of their trade-ins when determining the cost of new cars for tax purposes. The auto dealers association said a buyer trading in a car valued at $10,000 would have to pay an additional $300 in taxes.
After Perdue’s news conference, Rep. Nelson Cole, a Reidsville Democrat, said he doesn’t want the fund.
“I don’t think now is a good time to be adding a tax burden to our citizens,” said Cole, a budget writer in the House.
Cole said the issue was likely to get debated. “It’s just the beginning of the dance,” he said.
The state needs new sources of transportation money, Perdue said, because the Highway Trust Fund cannot meet demands for improvements.
The state Department of Transportation vowed to find money to start work this year on a new Interstate 85 bridge across the Yadkin River near Salisbury after the federal government rejected the state’s $300 million request for stimulus money to replace it.
But the DOT needs about $150 million more to widen six miles of I-85 near the bridge.
The bridge, judged “structurally deficient” by federal inspectors, can give drivers a sense of unease with its narrow lanes, low guard rail, sweeping curve preceding the eastern end and murky brown water below.
Rep. Becky Carney, a Charlotte Democrat and co-chairwoman of the House Transportation Committee, keeps her distance from tractor-trailers so she’s not on the bridge at the same time.
“I let them get across,” she said, “and then I gun it.”
Staff writer Mark Johnson contributed to this report.
Published Tue, May 25, 2010 05:56 AM
Modified Tue, May 25, 2010 01:09 AM
[email protected] or 919-829-4821
Priorities Compete for Place in Budget (Greensboro News and Record)
Priorities Compete for Place in Budget (Greensboro News and Record) (exerpt)
Meanwhile, Gov. Bev Perdue wasn’t going to let her idea to create a new “Mobility Fund” for high-need, high-cost road projects die. From the story:
As proposed, the fund would take in up to $300 million per year by 2013 through a combination of fees on drivers and ending a sales-tax break on new car sales.
But at least some House members are skeptical they would agree to raise fees as residents struggle with an economy that has sent unemployment over 11 percent.
“I don’t think this is the time to enhance revenue,” said Rep. Nelson Cole, a Reidsville Democrat who plays a key role on transportation issues. “There’s no support on (either) side of the aisle to make this happen.”
And as House leaders held a public hearing on the budget Monday, dozens of speakers from across the state pleaded the case for priorities such as schools for deaf children and health care programs for the poor — all of them competitors for scarce tax money.
But Rep. Hugh Holliman, a Lexington Democrat and the House majority leader, said Cole may have overstated the objections. He said the mobility fund was still being discussed.
And Perdue said shying away from fee increases was a “political” calculation, rather than one taking into account the needs of businesses.
“I don’t know of any business, both in North Carolina now and outside North Carolina, who will ever walk away from laying down jobs in this state because of what the cost of a DOT fee is or what the cost of a registration fee is,” Perdue said when asked about objections to the fees. Those businesses, she said, would leave if they couldn’t move goods and workers about the state.
Perdue says new N.C. highway projects fund needed (Associated Press)
Perdue says new N.C. highway projects fund needed (Associated Press)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Mayors joined Gov. Beverly Perdue on Monday to urge the Legislature to create this year a dedicated fund to build urgent road and other transportation projects they say are needed to keep the state’s economic engines roaring in the decades ahead.
Perdue wants the General Assembly to create the North Carolina Mobility Fund, which the governor said would generate up to $300 million annually by 2013 through higher driver’s license fees, the end of a trade-in sales tax break on new car sales and shifting around other pots of money.
The governor said the Department of Transportation would use the fund to pay for efforts to ease congestion with projects of statewide significance. The current road-funding formula punishes regions that want to spend money on large projects, making them hard to accomplish.
The fund likely would first be used to widen several miles of Interstate 85 close to the Yadkin River Bridge in Davidson and Rowan counties — a key shipping corridor between Atlanta and points north. Work is about ready to start to replace the aging bridge by issuing bonds.
“North Carolina values the safety of our businesses and the people who call North Carolina home and travel through North Carolina,” Perdue told reporters at a news conference. “It’s our obligation to make our traveling public safe.”
A portion of Mobility Fund money also would go to interstate maintenance, city transportation projects and improving the state’s ports to attract industries that rely on shipping.
“The Mobility Fund is all about job creation,” Morehead City Mayor Jerry Jones said. “We need to find new revenue.”
Perdue inserted the fund in her budget proposal last month, but Senate Democrats declined to put the measure in their $19 billion spending plan last week. Senators didn’t have enough time to consider the idea in the first week of the session but they’re “open to new ways to fund transportation and are studying this issue,” said Schorr Johnson, spokesman for Senate leader Marc Basnight, D-Dare.
The House is now considering its own version of the budget. While some House members back the idea, Sen. Nelson Cole, D-Rockingham, co-chairman of the House budget transportation subcommittee, isn’t sold on it when the state unemployment rate is more than 10 percent.
“I don’t think this is the time to be enhancing revenue,” said Cole, adding that people are “looking for a paycheck, not a way to pay us in taxes.”
The North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association also said it was concerned about what it called a “double taxation” strategy to build up the fund starting in 2012 by eliminating a provision that allows consumers to reduce their sales tax bill on car purchases if they trade in an old car. For example, trading in a car valued at $10,000 reduce the sales tax on the new car by $300. Cole is a retired automobile dealer.
Perdue’s proposal would increase some fees in the coming year, including raising annual state vehicle registrations from $28 to $35 for cars and light trucks.
Perdue said it would be shortsighted of the Legislature to avoid the issue because of what she called election-year worries over fees or taxes.
“I don’t know of any business, both in North Carolina now and outside North Carolina, who will ever walk away from laying down jobs in this state because of what the cost of a DOT fee is or what the cost of a registration fee is,” Perdue said. “They will walk away if the infrastructure doesn’t meet their needs to do business.”
Monday, May 24, 2010 (Updated 7:17 pm)
By Gary D. Robertson
Associated Press
Perdue Audio from Mobility Press Conference
The Governor thanked the mayors for coming to the press conference. Listen here.
Then Q&A from the press conference. Listen here.
NC governor, mayors lobby for transportation fund (The Associated Press )
NC governor, mayors lobby for transportation fund (The Associated Press )
Gov. Beverly Perdue and North Carolina mayors aren’t giving up on her effort to set aside extra money to build critical transportation projects that have been slowed down over the years.
Perdue and mayors from Asheville to Newport scheduled a Monday news conference off Interstate 40 in Wake County to talk up the Mobility Fund she inserted in her budget proposal last month.
The governor said the fund would build urgent projects like the Yadkin River Bridge replacement on Interstate 85 and ultimately grow to $300 million. Revenues would come from higher transportation fees like a 25 percent increase in the cost of state vehicle registrations.
The Senate didn’t put the program in its budget approved last week but is still interested in the idea.
