Representative Tine Takes on the Governor's Transportation Plan | Eastern NC Now

News Release:

    Raleigh     Representative Paul Tine, a freshman in the minority from Dare County, is taking on the Governor's new transportation plan. "The main issue with this plan is we are being asked to vote on a transportation formula when we are not being given the specifics of the criteria to be used," said Rep. Tine. "Rural areas appear to be particularly at risk of losing funding."

    The 31 page transportation bill was presented this week in the Transportation and Finance Committee. The bill sponsors say the plan will take the politics out of deciding which roads will be built by using data driven criteria. Projects would compete for dollars on a statewide level for 40% of the budget, a regional level for another 30%, and a divisional level for a final 30%. The bill does not, however, stipulate under what criteria projects will be measured within these allocations.

    "The bill states that there will be a report in 2014 that will spell out the exact formula for judging the merits of each project, but we are being asked to vote now," stated Tine. "The end result may be to take politics out of the decision making process, but there is no denying that politics will be used to set the formulas. Depending on how they set the particulars, rural communities could be completely shut out nearly half of the state's transportation budget."

    The bill sponsors and the Department of Transportation have shared some broad strokes of the overall plan. The statewide allocation is mainly for major highways and will be data driven. The exact formula is not known but it appears that increasing access speed to existing economic centers will be a heavily weighted factor. The regional portion for secondary highways is made up of 2 of the 14 divisions and again data will be used to determine the priorities. Finally the divisional projects of secondary roads will be a mix of local input and data.

    "We have two competing policies," said Rep. Tine. "In rural communities, we are looking to unlock untapped economic potential. In urban centers they are looking to efficiently connect more people to existing assets. Both are very important to the economic health of North Carolina. What we don't know is how these two competing interests are going to be weighed in the formula."

    All of these unknown considerations would affect the Currituck Bridge. The gap funding for this and other toll projects is being removed under the transportation proposal. The Currituck Bridge has a Record of Decision that is about to be released and the bridge could be within 6 months of getting started. The state has invested approximately $25 million in the permitting and design process.

    Rep. Tine offered and passed an amendment on Thursday in the Finance Committee that would keep the tolling projects in place that are near completion. Rep. Tine stated that his reason for adding these projects back into the Governor's transportation plan is that the formula for how these projects might compete has not been revealed. "We have invested a lot of time and money into these projects and until we are certain of how they will compete, they need to remain in the transportation plan."

    While the amendment was successful, it is expected that the bill sponsors will remove the provisions by offering a Proposed Committee Substitute (PCS) in the Appropriations Committee on Tuesday. A PCS is a new version of the bill and can be offered in a Committee by the bill sponsor at any time.


Office of Representative Paul Tine

District 6- Beaufort, Dare Hyde, Washington Counties
(919) 733-5906

Contact: Paul Tine (252) 305-5133    paul.tine@ncleg.net