Ferry tolls raise their ugly head again: You need to know why | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

A tax increase by any other name is still a tax increase.

    I thought we beat the issue of tolling ferries in Eastern North Carolina about a year ago. At that time there were meetings, newspaper articles, threats of political doom, and a lot of dancing by politicians. So if everyone made it clear that we did not want to toll our ferries, why are we having to beat this dead horse again?

    The tolling issue reminds me of the child who (thinks it) cannot live without something whether it is a piece of bubble gum or new computer and just will not take "No" for an answer. We can handle that two or three-year-old pretty quickly. It is the teenager who has developed more adult skills who seemingly never gives up. You got it. Our political teenager is acting up.

    This issue is not about ferry tolling or Eastern North Carolina. It is about a huge policy change in the way transportation is funded in North Carolina. The reason for this policy change is so the boys in the Piedmont counties can raise large sums of money to pay for their (liberal) ideas about the future of transportation. This spending will take place within the "Fertile Piedmont Crescent". It runs from Raleigh to Greensboro and down to Charlotte. There are heavy hitters in the Piedmont's Fertile Crescent who stand to make a lot of money out of a big policy change in how these sweetheart transportation projects will be funded.

    The "economic plan" is to greatly enhance transportation. This will attract business, industry, commerce, professional athletic teams and people. This I call the "If you build it they will come school of economic development." Their idea is to build light rail starting in the Charlotte area, toll roads along with the feeder roads and service facilities to service these high volume travel ways.

    A lot of money will be made acquiring new right of way, building roads and rail lines by contractors. With the new transportation alignments there will be opportunity to build housing and shopping centers, service stations and all of the other things people need. According to these planners, as these things are built the population will increase and we will have prosperity. This really sounds good but this is not how the business world really functions. These people have it backwards. First there are increases in population and then there is the need for better transportation. That is the only way the State of North Carolina has funded transportation in the past. Population centers develop when there is commerce. We need to figure out how to lower taxes and regulations. Getting out of NAFTA and using tariffs would help increase jobs in North Carolina..

    There is not at present any justification to build light rail and new toll roads. The public will not sit still for roads and railroads to nowhere to be built using tax money. The people with the desire to make a lot of money from improved transportation have a plan. They are going to let all of us pay for their idea without raising taxes. It will not cost us anything they suggest. We will borrow billions of dollars and pay it back with user fees or tolls. All of the money will come from the new people who need these facilities. Or so they say. "Build it and they will come."

    This is a no risk investment for the contractors and planners. They are guaranteed a profit. They will also become the speculators in land and shopping centers. It does not matter to them whether their idea for the people coming works or not to pay for all the debt the state borrowed. They have still made a profit during the construction phase. If the tolls will not pay for their ideas, the tax payer can. Why? Because you are guaranteeing the loans that build the roads and railroads.

    Back to why we are having to face the "ugly head of tolls" again. Things got so hot last year the legislature extracted themselves from the ferry toll issue by packing the decision off on the Regional Transportation Organizations (RPO's). Every county and most major cities are members of an RPO or MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization). RPO's are made up of several adjoining counties. RPO's are inventions of the legislature originally intended to provide advice for transportation planning for their member counties. RPO things became distorted with Governor Perdue supporting a new way of dividing transportation money among the various regions of the state along with the state-wide tolling issue. RPO's seem to be becoming more important as dumping grounds, or firewalls against accountability for politicians.

    Let us put all of this into a nut shell. A group in the Piedmont needs a lot of money to build transportation facilities that cannot be justified by today's needs. They are trying to find new ways to raise the money. The legislature is not willing to jump into "If you build it they will come" financing guarantees. Most of the current legislative leadership does not want to raise taxes. The legislature has managed to avoid a confrontation by not doing anything and packing the current hot potato off on to RPO's. But the "nagging teenager" group in the Piedmont is not giving up. They are trying to force the hand of the Legislature.

    Want to know who the players are? You already know about the Legislature. The "nagging teenagers" are Thom Tillis, along with his hangers on and Governor McCroy and his hangers on. So, this is a subtle contest between Governor McCroy and the Legislature. The Eastern North Carolina ferries and our RPO's are the guinea pig. If they can get tolls on the ferries it will be easier to get them on roads in the Piedmont.

    Eastern North Carolina, along with our ferry system, has become the pawn in a huge transportation tolling plan. The Piedmont crowd has a serious political problem. If the Piedmont crowd is asked to pass legislation to allow borrowing, to be guaranteed by the State of North Carolina, to build toll highways and railroads and the ferries in Eastern North Carolina do not have to pay tolls, a lot of their voters will demand balk at toll roads while ferries go un-tolled.

    We could be talking about as much as a hundred billion dollars.

    The Governor's Office, along with Tillis and his hangers on, are desperate for the Department of Transportation to convince Eastern North Carolina to accept the tolling of ferries. They need to get this done before the 2016 elections. Governor McCroy has to run for office then.

    There are three big things to be considered. The first is that North Carolina allowed the tolling of plank roads in the mid1800's. The single biggest hazard back then to plank toll roads was the efforts make to avoid paying the tolls. Expect that to come back. Expect some sophisticated corruption to come back with new tolling.

    Proposals for tolling of ferries offered by the Department of Transportation seem to be very affordable. There is no guarantee tolls will remain low. There is every indication they can and will be raised once the camel gets his nose under the tent. Once the RPO gives approval, the entire issue of how much the tolls will cost is no longer in our hands. The concept of tolling and alternative methods of raising transportation revenue is a major shift in paying for transportation in North Carolina. Downeast would be the first to try this experiment.

    North Carolina has one of the best transportation systems in the United States. We were the first state to go to a state wide system of highway construction and maintenance with a central engineering department. We have state-wide funding and planning paid for from a single pot. A lot of other states have not caught up with us. Their roads are a lot worse than ours.

    Most of our transportation problems have come from politicians tinkering with the Department of Transportation and stealing money from the Transportation Trust Fund to pay for social programs.

    "If you build it they will come" has failed every place it has been tried.