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Streetcars on the ballot amid trolley revival (includes Charlotte) (Associated Press)

Streetcars on the ballot amid trolley revival (Associated Press)

BOISE, Idaho — A streetcar revival in American cities isn’t just kicking up sparks from the tracks, they’re flying down at city hall, too.

In Idaho’s capital, a proposed $60 million trolley plan has become a major theme of local elections Nov. 3. Likewise, mayoral races in Charlotte, N.C., and Cincinnati hinge at least partially on whether they should build lines of their own.

What links Boise, Cincinnati and Charlotte — and Salt Lake City, Dallas, Atlanta and Kansas City, where streetcar tracks abandoned in 1953 still poke through the city’s weathered asphalt — is they’re among dozens of local governments hoping their modern street projects will benefit from federal grants, including $1.5 billion in stimulus funding due to be awarded by mid-February 2010.

In all, some 80 U.S. cities have streetcar proposals, the American Public Transportation Association says, a trend bolstered by President Barack Obama’s signal he’s more inclined to pump federal dollars into streetcars than was President Bush.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been revising policies that had favored applications for projects that moved people further and faster, like rapid-transit buses, but downplayed attributes like economic development.

“The bottom line is, this administration wants more transit options for more people and that includes streetcars,” LaHood told The Associated Press last week.

In late October, his agency chipped in $75 million to help expand Portland, Ore.’s 7-year-old streetcar system, marking the first time the Small Starts grant program for small-scale urban transit projects has been used for streetcars.

Still, the availability of federal cash hasn’t quelled local debate.

Proponents see streetcars as economic development engines that will reduce congestion and air-pollution by turning back the clock: Streetcars largely disappeared from U.S. cities by the 1950s, as automobiles bullied them to the margins.

In Portland, for instance, its streetcar system is credited with helping create $2.5 billion in construction since the line was announced in 1997, including 7,248 new housing units within three blocks of the tracks.

Foes, however, dismiss trolleys as “toy trains” that benefit special interests and promote profligate public spending. The rush for easy federal cash, they argue, is obscuring the reality that cities will eventually rely on taxpayers to subsidize lines; federal dollars go only for construction.

Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory favors his city’s $128 million streetcar plan, after traveling to Seattle and Toronto to see their urban rail projects. Brad Wenstrup, Mallory’s challenger, calls the project “ill conceived” and compares it to Cincinnati’s failed early 20th-century subway, where miles of tunnel were dug but no track ever laid.

Foes like the Cincinnati NAACP got a measure on the ballot seeking to require a popular vote before any streetcar could proceed.

“This is some kind of a dream sequence of people who want to pretend they are in Portland, Oregon,” said Dusty Rhodes, the Hamilton County auditor and a vocal Cincinnati streetcar opponent.

Meanwhile, in Charlotte’s mayoral race, Republican candidate John Lassiter said he likes the idea but insists there’s no money to pay for it. Democrat Anthony Foxx contends a 10-mile line that could cost $400 million will help boost downtown’s fortunes; last month, he voted to override the current mayor’s veto of a $4.5 million engineering study.

The streetcar is one of the few areas where the two Charlotte candidates part ways.

Just days before Tuesday’s city council election in Boise, David Litster, a Harvard-educated businessman who wants to kill the city’s proposed 2.3-mile downtown line, mailed flyers suggesting his opponent TJ Thomson is in cahoots with streetcar backers like Mayor Dave Bieter. Bieter has endorsed Thomson.

“The streetcar is really just a symptom of a problem — keeping a careful eye on spending and keeping taxes low, and listening to voters,” Litster said. “This trolley fails on both accounts.”

Thomson, an Idaho Power Co. auditor who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign, counters Litster is misrepresenting his stance: Thomson is undecided whether to back the streetcar, especially before an economic study, and wants the matter to go to a vote.

He’s also waiting to see if Boise gets $40 million of the proposed $60 million cost of the trolley system from the stimulus act, because it’s competing with transportation proposals nationwide totaling $57 billion, 38 times what’s available.

Litster “has run a one-issue campaign,” Thomson said. “It’s just not that simple. But he’s done a good job of keeping it in the spotlight.”
By JOHN MILLER (AP) – 1 day ago

NORTH CAROLINA NAMED NATION’S ‘TOP BUSINESS CLIMATE’ FOR 5th CONSECUTIVE YEAR (Governor Press Release)

RALEIGH – Gov. Bev Perdue announced today that North Carolina remains the state with the “Top Business Climate,” according to Site Selection magazine. It is the fifth year in a row and the eighth time in nine years that the state has taken the top honor in the annual ranking by Site Selection, one of the nation’s premier magazines for economic development.

“Business leaders know we are listening to them and working aggressively to meet their needs,” Perdue said. “Companies know that in North Carolina they will find top-quality talent, world-class infrastructure, a pro-business environment, and premier education institutions. North Carolina is simply a great place to do business.”

Site Selection Editor-in-Chief Mark Arend agreed that North Carolina’s winning streak “demonstrates that businesses are finding in the state what they need to succeed.” He added, “The synergy between North Carolina’s research parks, corporations, communities, and economic developers at the state and local levels is a major factor in this year’s top ranking.”

Site Selection magazine’s annual “Top Business Climate” rankings are based on quantitative and qualitative factors that corporate site-seekers – those who help companies expand or relocate – say they consider most important. Fifty percent of the ranking comes from a survey of corporate site selection executives who were asked to rank their top 10 states, and 50 percent is based on four measures of new plant activity as tracked by Site Selection in its “New Plant Database.”

The magazine describes the ranking process as “a blend of objective, actual new or expansion project announcements, and subjective input from corporate site seekers.” The article about North Carolina’s No. 1 ranking can be found at: www.siteselection.com.

November 3, 2009 Contact: Chrissy Pearson Cell: (919) 215-4669 Office: (919) 733-0767

NCDOT Presentation- Transportation: The Federal Outlook

This is a presentation Susan Howard from the Governor’s D.C. office gave at the recent NCSITE Board meeting. Click here for the presentation.

Metropolitans in the Middle – Federalism, Regions and States (The Brookings Institution)

Some great back and forth about U.S. federalism has been banging around the web lately, with Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein wondering whether America actually needs states and Josh Patashnik over at The Plank defending them.

Yglesias is particularly good here when he notices that the effectiveness of American federalism suffers because while states remain predominant “we don’t really live our lives `at the state level,’” and yet “we don’t have any level of governance that addresses metro area issues.” That’s exactly right, to which I would only add that the centrality of metros to economic life makes this disconnect even more dire. So one can share Matt’s frustration when he says that “there’s not a ton that can be done about this.”

And yet, there is actually quite a bit that a smart, refocused nation can and must do to remedy the absence of middle-tier (metro or regional) government from our federalism.

To begin with, Washington (and states, for that matter) needs to recognize, deal with, and bolster the array of metropolitan actors that already exists. Yglesias is right that the Constitution doesn’t account for metros, so that there is–constitutionally–no “there there” between the localism of individual municipalities and the larger states. Yet that doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening at that level.

For example, the nation possesses 380 metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) that are already empowered–notwithstanding their variable quality–to engage in long-range transportation planning. Therefore, wouldn’t one way to thrust U.S. metros farther into federalism mix be to expand the MPOs’ role and responsibilities to mandate, say, planning and program alignment across a broader array of federal and state programs? Likewise, hundreds of other increasingly robust “metro” regional councils and other entities are also active, ranging from scores of councils of government (COGs) and myriad economic development districts (EDDs) to the metro mayors’ caucuses in Chicago and Denver; the older suburbs coalitions in Kansas City and Cleveland and Milwaukee; and the scores of other regional economic, civic, philanthropic, or environmental initiatives now working on regional problems. Shouldn’t these too be sought out, utilized more by Washington and the states, and empowered? Sure they should: Washington and the states should each seek out and work with the existing retinue of metropolitan actors as core partners in investment and program delivery.

In addition, Washington and the states should go farther and seek to stimulate the emergence of new metropolitan alignments. Perhaps the best way to do this is to stimulate multi-jurisdictional regional collaboration, say through federal grant competitions that reward such activity. That will inevitably coalesce new middle-tier governance entities. So why not apply—as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development does in the Notification of Funding Availability for its Neighborhood Stabilization Program—clear preferences for collaborative efforts? For that matter, why shouldn’t Washington apply a modest preference for multi-jurisdictional collaboration to essentially all of its activities, including dozens of the nation’s scores of categorical, block, and other grant flows? Such a “regionalism steer” would evoke much more metropolitan or quasi-metropolitan governance activity in U.S. regions. Such modest but clear pay-offs for cross-boundary cooperation would go surprisingly far toward producing more active “middle-tier” governance in America.

Yet that’s just one bundle of needed changes. Short of scrapping states or a constitutional convention on middle-tier governance, there’s plenty the nation could do to better align U.S. federalism with the nation’s metro-centric economic reality. Relationships between the federal government, states, and localities need to be re-imagined to more fully realize the potential of metropolitan America. Metropolitan actors need more discretion and standing. Federal and state policies and programs need to be put at the service of metropolitan needs and priorities. Obvious intrusions into regional sovereignty need to be minimized.

To achieve this, the nation will need to grope toward one more iteration of the “federalism bargain”–the nation’s continuously renegotiated squaring of centralization and localism. Powers and responsibilities constantly shift between different levels of government–including localities–in response to the social, economic, environmental, and political imperatives of different eras. Over time, a decentralized nation centralized, prompted by wars and the Great Depression; then, beginning in the 1970s, new conditions brought a new drift toward devolution and state creativity. Now, it is time–not least because of the current economic crisis–to readjust U.S. federalism and governance once more.

Mark Muro, Fellow and Policy Director, Metropolitan Policy Program
October 22, 2009

NCDOT Transportation Intergovernmental Policy Advisory Group-Update

Transportation Intergovernmental Advisory Group – Moving Forward

Meeting Facilitation Approach – NCDOT is recommending that the Department take on the responsibility of facilitating future Steering Committee meetings in lieu of hiring a consulting firm to provide these services.

10/22 Steering Committee Meeting Agenda:

I. Reconnect with Steering Committee Members (What’s working well, not so well, next steps, and roles and responsibilities)

o Steering Committee will select and prioritize specific topic areas to review (complete)

o Steering Committee will define and agree on general parameters for each work group created (i.e., subtopic to be addressed, general scope of project, expected outcomes, timeline to complete, and number and type of work group members to involve)

o Two Steering Committee members (NCDOT representative and External Partner representative) will be appointed to serve as Co-Sponsors for each work group

o Steering Committee members will make recommendations to co-sponsors regarding potential work group members

o Steering Committee will meet quarterly and have a set agenda to facilitate meeting progress and work group reporting

II. New Work Group Development (including roles and responsibilities of Steering Committee)

o Work group Co-Sponsors will be responsible for selecting work group members (5-7 members), providing direction, resourcing work group, answering questions/making decisions, and providing quarterly progress updates to Steering Committee

Six-Month Highway Bill Extension Now Likely in Senate (CQ Today Midday Update)

The Senate is scrapping plans for an 18-month extension of surface transportation law and is now working instead on a six-month extension, a Democratic aide and industry officials confirmed Friday.

Barbara Boxer , D-Calif., and James M. Inhofe , R-Okla., — the chairwoman and ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee — were unsuccessful in persuading their colleagues to allow quick passage of an 18-month extension of the 2005 surface transportation law.

An industry official said the senators realized they would have trouble moving the administration-backed 18-month extension, so they acquiesced to a shorter term bill.

The six-month extension was touted by George V. Voinovich , R-Ohio, who said he would have blocked the 18-month bill. He says the highway and transit programs are too important to the economy to wait more than a year to fix, and he sought the shorter extension to put pressure on Congress to enact a full, multi-year reauthorization next year.

A shorter extension would be a victory for proponents of long-term transportation legislation such as the six-year, $500 billion plan being pressed by House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James L. Oberstar , D-Minn.

But a six-month extension would still leave the Senate at odds with the House, which passed a three-month extension Sept. 23. Oberstar has adamantly opposed any extension beyond the end of the year, because he wants to force Congress to take up a multiyear highway bill early in 2010.

Programs are being kept afloat within a one-month fiscal 2010 stopgap spending measure that expires Oct. 31. Congress is poised to pass another one of those measures soon, while appropriators finish the fiscal 2010 spending bills.

CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE
Oct. 23, 2009 – 1:27 p.m.

DOT stimulus funds going further than expected (WRAL.com)

The North Carolina Department of Transportation is anticipating another $100 million in federal stimulus funding for highway and bridge projects after project bids have come in less than anticipated.

“The general overall savings is around an average of 20 percent, so far, on projects,” Victor Barbour, the DOT’s administrator for technical services, said Wednesday.

The state initially received $735 million designated for certain projects to help boost the economy. Because of the lower bids, the DOT has added more than 40 projects to its master list, bringing the total to 284.

More are expected in the coming months.

Berry Jenkins, with the Carolinas Association of General Contractors, an interest group for contractors and road builders statewide, said however that the low bids are a reflection of the overall economy.

“They’re just hoping, keeping their fingers crossed, that (the economy) will get better, that the recovery will turn around,” he said.

The bigger concern for the group is what will happen to some of the companies once all the stimulus funds are assigned by next year.

“They’re doing it to survive,” he said. “There (are) companies that have told me, and I believe that they’re being truthful, that if they did not take some work below their actual cost, they would have to close their doors.”

“We have to do all we can to keep the contractors alive,” Barbour said. “For us at DOT, competition is a wonderful thing. The more healthy contractors we have, the better we’ll all be from a taxpayer perspective.”

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/6256841/

Reporter: Bruce Mildwurf
Photographer: Greg Clark
Web Editor: Kelly Gardner
Posted: Oct. 21 6:33 p.m.
Updated: Oct. 21 7:09 p.m.

Project Ricochet aims to deflect gangs (News & Observer)

Project Ricochet aims to deflect gangs

RALEIGH– Ambitious. That was the sentiment among an influential group of community leaders and activists who gathered in downtown Raleigh this week to discuss a new way to save area youth from the lure of gangs and crime.

Some present noted that similar efforts in recent years began with unbridled optimism only to falter.

Still resolute in their mission, the group — which included state legislators Dan Blue and Deborah Ross, Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker and noted gang activists Jeffery “Mafumbo” Smith and Richard “Monk” Henry — met to discuss their newest hope.

Project Ricochet is a new initiative to fight the gangs’ attraction by organizing traditional community resources — parents, grandparents, youth service providers and faith-based groups — to work in tandem with a brigade of “boots on the ground” ex-gang members.

At the heart of Project Ricochet are youth-driven entrepreneurial projects and job placements in area businesses to offer financial reward to young people who are determined to steer away from gangs and crime. Financial opportunities listed in the proposal are a bakery, a publishing press, landscaping and general maintenance, clothing design and silk screening.

“As quiet as it’s kept, many times a young person is out there selling drugs to try and help support his family,” said Abeni El-Amin, a co-founder of the project.

On May 25, Rodriguez D. Shay Burrell, 18, was gunned down outside his father’s house at 500 Haywood St., a few blocks from a newly formed police command unit.

Days after the fatal shooting, several members of the Wake County Gang Prevention Partnership met with concerned citizens at a Southeast Raleigh community center, and Project Ricochet was born.

“We talked about the impact of gun violence and the ricochet effect of a bullet,” El-Amin said. Along with the loss of Burrell’s life, the slain man left a 4-year-old daughter fatherless. Three suspects have been charged with his death.

El-Amin and other members of the Project Ricochet organizing committee presented a year-long budget estimate of $485,072. That figure includes wages and salaries, youth and staff training and youth transportation to help thwart an illicit youth culture that has spawned 56 gangs and more than 3,500 gang members in Wake County. The funding would come from a combination of public and private sources, they said.

The group did not sugar-coat the monumental task before them.

Jeanne Tedrow, founder the nationally recognized community development corporation Passage Home, pointed out similar efforts in the past have not been able to develop a sustained effort. “CHOICES was for only six months,” she said about one highly touted program that targeted habitual street level drug dealers. “It should have been three years.”

The Lost Generation Task Force, aimed to reduce the number of young black and Latino men going to prison, struggled with organizational structure, Tedrow said.

“It is a big disappointment to me,” admitted Bruce Lightner, a member of the organizing committee and a co-founder of the LGTF. “I think lessons have been learned. We have very little choice but to summon the will.”

“

[Project Ricochet] is ambitious, but it should be fully vetted,” Tedrow warned. “There’s more than enough talent and resources,” she said referring to the group gathered with her. “I’m just not sure there’s a will to do it.”

[email protected] or 919-829-4533

State forced to free 20 violent criminals (News & Observer)

State forced to free 20 violent criminals (News and Observer)

Twenty murderers, rapists and robbers sentenced to life in North Carolina prisons in the 1970s will be released at the end of October as a result of recent court rulings.

Most of the inmates are in their 50s and 60s, but many of them were convicted years ago of gruesome crimes that might have kept them locked up longer today. One of them successfully petitioned the courts to recognize that old laws defined a life sentence as 80 years, and that another law cut those sentences in half.

Ten of those scheduled to be released were sex offenders, including men who raped young girls. Seven have spent time on death row. The one woman in the group was convicted of murdering a state trooper while fleeing a bank robbery.

State officials said Thursday they have no choice but to release them.

“I am appalled that the state of North Carolina is being forced to release prisoners who have committed the most heinous crimes, without any review of their cases,” said Gov. Beverly Perdue.

Thomas Bennett, executive director of the N.C. Victim Assistance Network, worries about the victims’ safety and stability.

“This will open new wounds and retraumatize crime victims,” Bennett said. “These are bad actors. These are not people we want on the streets.”

Perdue’s office said she was determined to find a way to keep the inmates in prison, but a spokesman for the state’s attorney general said it is unlikely she will prevail.

“Our lawyers have argued just about everything they can think of to keep this from happening,” said Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper. “The Supreme Court has the final say.”

The inmates are scheduled to be released Oct. 29, just 20 days after the N.C. Supreme Court declined to overturn a state Court of Appeals decision that recalculated life sentences applied to crimes committed during the 1970s.

Prison officials expect another eight to 10 inmates a year over the next several years to qualify for release under these new guidelines.

Those inmates due to be released owe their freedom to Bobby Bowden, 60, a former death row inmate convicted in 1975 of killing two Fayetteville men.

In 2005 Bowden appealed to a local judge in Cumberland County, arguing that he had served his “life” sentence. Bowden’s pitch failed locally, but last year the state Court of Appeals ruled that Bowden’s math was correct. Last week, the state Supreme Court issued a brief upholding the Court of Appeals ruling.

Bowden has spent 36 years in prison. But during a period of years in the 1970s, state law defined a life sentence as 80 years. In 1981, the state’s sentencing laws were revised again, applying a retroactive reduction.

Under the changes, sentences levied before 1981 were essentially cut in half. So, dozens of inmates sentenced to life for crimes committed in the 1970s had their terms reduced to 40 years.

Inmates such as Bowden chiseled away at their 40-year sentences even further with “merit time,” months and years knocked off their sentences for good behavior, for taking on jobs while in prison and for completing degree programs. All the inmates to be turned loose on Oct. 29 earned some sort of merit credit.

Since 1994, when North Carolina eliminated parole, a life sentence in North Carolina has meant the convict will die behind bars. But only first-degree murder can carry a life sentence, and now, the shortest sentence someone convicted now of first-degree forcible rape can serve is 12 years.

Feverish preparation

State correction officials have been working furiously to prepare the 20 inmates for their release and alert the victims and their families. Staff spent this week urging relatives of these inmates to take them in on Oct. 29. They have also been trying to track down victims, many of whom have long since lost touch with the court system.

“In some cases, there’s shock when we call,” said Keith Acree, a DOC spokesman. “In other cases, there’s uncertainty. In a lot of cases, the best we can do is leave a message on a machine.”

In the meantime, Acree said, some local prosecutors and police are rifling through old court files, looking for crimes with which they never bothered to charge these defendants. Other officials are running the inmates’ names in a national crime database to see if they are wanted on crimes outside North Carolina.

“They are looking for any sort of issue that will allow these people to stay locked up,” Acree said.

Bowden, the inmate who launched this battle, may be one of the last to leave.

The Court of Appeals sent his case back to a Cumberland County judge to calculate his exact “life sentence” using the new formula. The judge may not have time to figure that new number soon enough for Bowden to join the others leaving prison at the end of the month.

News researcher Brooke Cain contributed to this report.

[email protected] or 919-829-8927

Gov. Perdue Appalled at Ruling that Cuts Short Life Sentences (Press Release)

Gov. Perdue Appalled at Ruling that Cuts Short Life Sentences (Governor’s Press Release)

Governor concerned about immediate release of 20 violent offenders, dozens more upcoming

RALEIGH – Gov. Bev Perdue this week asked her attorneys and the N.C. Department of Justice to review all options available to the state to reverse and delay the N.C. Supreme Court ruling in the State v. Bowden case. The court’s decision in that case will force the early release of murderers and rapists serving life sentences, including seven who were originally sentenced to death.

The governor this week received a list of 20 violent offenders who will be released on Oct. 29 and dozens more who will be released in the next few years because of the court’s ruling. Each of the first 20 inmates who will be released have been reviewed for parole multiple times and denied. The court’s decision also prevents any additional review or recommendation by the Parole Commission, nor can these offenders be subject to any kind of monitoring or post-release supervision.

“I’m appalled that the state of North Carolina is being forced to release prisoners who have committed the most heinous of crimes, without any review of their cases,” said Gov. Perdue. “I don’t believe the General Assembly’s intent in 1974 was to let these violent offenders out of prison early. Releasing these potentially dangerous criminals is not in the best interest of the state or our citizens.”

The Department of Correction is attempting to notify all known victims of these crimes and is working with district attorneys and victims advocates to locate victims for whom it does not have current contact information. Victims who have not been contacted are asked to call the DOC Office of Victim Services toll free at 1-866-719-0108. In addition, DOC is working to identify recommended re-entry programs for offenders due to be released, although participation cannot be required.

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