The rumored plan is to vote on the bill Tuesday and Wednesday and send to the Governor for her signature before the end of the fiscal year.
Discussions of changing the equity formula became a part of the budget negotiations. Senator Nesbitt of Buncombe County advocated that they include an exemption to the state’s transportation equity formula in the budget for the Appalachian Development Highway System federal monies. (See how the exemption would affect your highway division here.) The monies date back to 1965 when Congress designated the federal funds to be spent on the Appalachian Highway System. But, because the monies are required by state law to flow through the equity formula, they are, in effect, spent across the State. Here is an excerpt from an Asheville Citizen Times article on the issue:
“More than $30 million a year is earmarked for the highway system…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.” (Asheville Citizen Times, 9/29/09)
The Appalachian Development Highway System monies, if exempted from the State Transportation Equity Formula, will be spent only in Graham, Cherokee, and Clay counties in highway division 14. The total new monies that will be taken from all the other highway divisions and spent in division 14 over a seven year period represent a 75% increase in federal construction highway dollars for division 14. (according to the table above provided by NCDOT)
Additionally, Rep. Hugh Holliman of Davidson County advocated that the first phase of the Yadkin River Bridge project be exempted from the formula. (Phase I is the actual bridge, while Phase II is to widen I-85 north of the bridge included as the first Mobility Fund project.)
There are rumors that the Appalachian Development Highway System funds were exempted from the equity formula in the budget bill. I am told there was much discussion around the issue, and the argument was successfully made that the urban areas had the loop money exempted, so this was in balance to that. I have not heard at this point whether any other changes were made to the equity formula.
As many of you have pointed out to me, the argument that the Appalachian Development Highway System funds were directed by Congress to be spent on the Appalachian Highway, the Surface Transportation Program/Direct Attributable (STP/STP-DA) federal monies are directed by Congress to be spent by metropolitan planning areas containing urbanized areas over 200,000 population. But, like the Appalachian Development Highway System monies, the STP-DA monies flow through the State’s transportation equity formula, and are therefore spent statewide. The metropolitan planning areas containing urbanized areas over 200,00 include Asheville, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, and Winston-Salem (and their MPO member cities, for example, in Raleigh this includes the Capital Area MPO with cities such as Franklinton and Creedmoor).
Democratic Leaders Reach Tentative Agreement On State Budget
http://www.digtriad.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=144333&catid=57