Thanks to the legislature and governor, North Carolinians can be confident that funding of our state’s transportation infrastructure is based on need and priority, not cronyism. John Hood offers an important reminder about the reform in this piece:
To argue the merits of applying a cost-benefit test to state expenditure is not necessarily to win the political argument, however. Those who favored the 2013 reforms — myself include — must continue to make an affirmative case for them.
Here’s what the last 25 years of empirical research tells us: states do not necessarily increase their rate of economic growth by spending more money on transportation, since the taxes required have their own offsetting costs. Rather, states boost their economies when they truly invest their money in high-demand, high-value-added projects.
In other words, successful states build (or widen) roads to Somewhere.
For a detailed description of the three levels of transportation funding that are now in place, continue reading here.
