Falling gas prices are expected to send a record number of Americans on the roads for Independence Day travel. AAA estimates that the 42.3 million motorists will take a trip of more than 50 miles during Independence Day week. If they drive down the stretch of I-95 in North Carolina they will find their ride quite bumpy and the road quite narrow.
This highway, which serves as North Carolina’s front yard, is poorly maintained and choked with billboards. Someone isn’t paying a fair share to use our roads, especially I-95.
It’s not the drivers of North Carolina. The state Department of Transportation has an operating budget of nearly $4 billion a year. About a quarter of that comes from federal funds, but the rest comes right out of the pockets of the people of North Carolina, much of it from the tax on motor fuel.
According to AAA, North Carolina’s average gas price is currently the highest in the Southeast. According to the American Petroleum Institute, North Carolina’s rate of 38.9 cents per gallon for motor fuel – set in January of 2012 – was the highest in the nation.
In large part, these gas taxes are high because North Carolina has the second largest network of state-maintained roads in the nation. All road users are paying the state’s costs of building and maintaining those roads, with one notable exception – the corporations that own billboards along those roads.
As we consider increasing tolls on drivers and capping gas taxes, it makes little sense that the General Assembly has allowed one group of highway users – the billboard industry – to enjoy a huge corporate subsidy.
Billboard subsidies
While the people of North Carolina pay serious money to maintain the beautiful roads of our state, they are giving a large corporate subsidy to billboard companies. These companies charge for ad space on roads built and maintained by the taxpayer.
Subsidizing ad sales for publicly traded corporations like CBS Corp., Lamar Advertising Co. and Clear Channel Communications on North Carolina’s roads makes little sense when North Carolina cannot afford to maintain those same roads.
The DOT recently has begun to study how to pay for widening the I-95 corridor and bringing it up to modern safety standards. They have estimated that if the work is financed by current tax policies alone, affected counties’ share of road dollars would be tied up for decades.
The I-95 corridor is the most heavily-plastered billboard alley in North Carolina. Many of the signs are advertising out-of-state attractions and they do nothing to introduce visitors to the state’s natural beauty. The DOT should look to making billboards pay their fair share for repairing their I-95 gravy train.
As our roads become more congested, only one user group profits more without paying more – billboard companies. There are more than 7,000 permitted billboards on North Carolina’s state roads.
Under the current fee structure, each billboard company must pay the state $60 per year per billboard. In order to chop down all the public’s trees in front of their billboards, they have to pay another $200. Those fees are not sufficient to cover the costs of administering the programs, according to the DOT.
Any typical driver will pay more to the state for using our roads than a typical billboard will.
Billboard companies have plenty left over to donate to political candidates for North Carolina office – more than $160,000 in the years 2005 through 2008, according to a report done by Democracy North Carolina.
Pay for views
Rather than tolling the drivers, we should be tolling the billboard companies for every car that passes. Service station owners in North Carolina have to absorb some of the cost of the state’s gas tax to remain competitive with stations in neighboring states.
North Carolina drivers already pay far more in taxes and fees to support the roads than drivers in surrounding states. Subsidizing billboards is unfair to North Carolinians whose tax dollars support the traffic that give the billboards value.
Gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory recently chastised the General Assembly for increasing that subsidy last session. His opponent, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, should do likewise.
All who use the roads of the “Good Roads” state should pay their fair share. Toll the billboards, not the people.
By Ryke Longest
(Fayetteville Observer)
Published: 10:26 AM, Sun Jul 01, 2012
