Davidson County commissioners aren’t happy with a General Assembly bill that could “shift funding of state roads from the state to the county level.”
Right now, the bill’s not a mandate, but Commissioner Fred McClure has been around long enough to know that things change:
McClure said “it is optional now,” but said he “can see the same slippery slope with this thing, once they get down the road those counties that have gone out and paved some roads will get some additional money and the counties that don’t use any of their own money, pretty soon we’ll turn around and we’ll have the roads like we’ll have the Medicaid. And it took us forever to get out from underneath that program.”
NCACC doesn’t exactly oppose the bill, but is looking at it with a critical eye, according to executive director David Thompson:
we do know that the (N.C. DOT) has estimated there to be a $65 billion gap in road funding over the next 25 years. We have not seen any viable proposals on how to cover this gap. We also know that some legislative analysts and legislators have said county property taxes are too low, so counties should help fund road maintenance and construction,” Thompson writes.
Nice. But here’s the money quote from Commissioner Max Walser:
“Clean water, sewage and school facilities and now roads?” Walser asked. “You’d have to raise property taxes 50 cents to build a reasonable of number of roads in this county …. My question is what’s the state going to do? We’re paying for it. The state of North Carolina has a lot of taxes, sales taxes, high gas taxes. I know I sound like a Republican …. We’ve got a serious problem in county governments across this state, trying to provide all these services, and roads, that’s impossible.”
I’m glad that Walser’s starting to see the light, but I have to ask why it takes such extreme measures.
