Western North Carolina local governments see imbalance in road funding (Asheville Citizen Times)
Western North Carolina should be allowed to spend federal funds on an unfinished network of mountain highways without giving up other road money to the rest of the state, a growing number of local elected officials say.
Local boards are calling on the General Assembly and Congress to change how they fund construction of the Appalachian Development Highway System.
On Monday, mayors and county commissioners who represent six western counties on the Southwestern Rural Transportation Planning Organization’s Transportation Advisory Committee voted for a resolution calling for the changes.
Three other regional transportation planning boards, made up of mayors, commissioners and other officials from Buncombe and seven surrounding counties, have passed similar resolutions this month. Graham County joined them last week.
“They’re taking all the money and spending it down east,” complained Graham County Commissioner Steve Odom, a Republican who also is a member of the Southwestern board.
More than $30 million a year is earmarked for the highway system, which includes a controversial plan to reroute U.S. 74 through Graham County, but the money is going unused because of the way state and federal legislators hand it out.
North Carolina law doesn’t allow spending in a region to tilt the formula for spreading road money equitably across the state.
So for every dollar that highways like U.S. 74 receive in Appalachian Development Highway System funds, the far-western region has to give up 96 cents in other road funding.
That’s because of how the General Assembly wrote the formula and because Congress doesn’t provide extra money for the mountain highways; it simply sets aside for them a slice of the money North Carolina would normally get to build all state highways.
The resolutions call for Congress to provide the funding as extra money and for the legislature to exempt the money from its equity formula, as it does with a few special kinds of funding such as for urban loops and toll roads.
Sen. John Snow, of Murphy, has filed legislation to exempt the money from the equity formula, but it failed to gain traction this year.
“Maybe with these folks asking for it, that will help us out a little bit, because we’ve still got that bill sitting down there,” said Snow, a member of the legislature’s Democratic majority.
The raft of resolutions is coming now in part because of discussions local planners had with new N.C. Transportation Secretary Eugene Conti, said Carrie Runser-Turner, transportation coordinator for Land-of-Sky Regional Council.
Conti mentioned his concerns about the Appalachian funding and its placement in the equity formula, Runser-Turner said.
But Department of Transportation officials in the previous and current administrations have said the change should come at the federal level, not in the legislature where it would reduce money for the rest of the state.
Today, other parts of the state “are getting a bit of a windfall” from money that’s supposed to go to the mountains, said Henderson County Commissioner Chuck McGrady.
He chairs the French Broad River Metropolitan Planning Organization’s transportation panel, which endorsed the resolution.
McGrady said U.S. Sen. Richard Burr’s office told the panel it is aware of the issue.
The federal highway bill that contains the funding expires Wednesday but the plan could be extended.
September 29, 2009
By Jordan Schrader
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090929/NEWS01/909290306