Fitzsimon File

Tolling for two North Carolinas

If transportation officials and some state lawmakers get their way, tolls roads will be common place in North Carolina in the near future. The current state budget includes plans for four toll roads, the first of which will be in Western Wake County.

The budget also includes $25 million a year from the General Fund to pay for the Wake County road that drivers will have to pay several dollars a day extra to use, creating a better transportation system for people who can afford it, a terrible precedent for what is supposed to be a public system of transportation.

There won’t be toll booths on the road. Drivers will be tracked by a transponder on their cars and the tolls will be charged to their credit cards. You will also be able to pull off the road and pay the tolls in advance, defeating the point of making travel faster.

If you don’t have a credit card or just don’t want to worry about it, a camera will take a picture of your license plate and send you a bill in the mail.  That will cost you more, if similar arrangements in other states are any indication.

A new stretch of toll road in Texas that recently opened will charge motorists $1.18 for the 16-mile trip if they have a transponder, $1.71 if they don’t and a camera records their trip.  Maybe part of the difference is for postage to mail the bill, but the result is the same.

Poor people who don’t have credit cards will have to pay more to drive on a toll road that already allows people with money to get to work faster.  Maybe lawmakers should build another highway on the same route too, a super toll road that costs $50 to use, for rich people who are really in a hurry.

 

Turning over a Golden Leaf?

The folks defending the Golden Leaf Foundation against accusations that it is a political board making grants based on political considerations can’t be too happy with the stories about the push for an environmentally friendly business park in Camden County to attract jobs to the area.

Golden Leaf receives half of the money North Carolina gets every year as part of the settlement between states and the tobacco companies. The Foundation was created to spur economic development in areas hurt by the decline of tobacco.

In the last few years, Golden Leaf has been part of efforts to recruit individual companies to the state, prompting criticism that it often operates as a division of the Commerce Department.

Foundation supporters object to that characterization as well as claims that the foundation board is beholden to the state’s political leaders who appoint them, Governor Mike Easley, Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, and House Speaker Joe Hackney.

News reports about plans for the green industrial park near the Virginia border mention Golden Leaf as a possible funding source.  A recent story in the Virginian Pilot quotes a staff member for Basnight saying he is determined to help Camden County.

The story notes that Basnight could help get funding from the Golden Leaf Foundation since he appoints part of the board.  That would be the board that is supposed to be free from political influence

 

Now you tell us

Lieutenant Governor Beverly Perdue recently visited the editorial board of the Greensboro News and Record seeking the paper’s endorsement. The visit prompted a less than flattering column by Doug Clark that included an interesting revelation from Perdue about the 2001 mental health reform efforts that have proven to be a disaster.

Clark quotes Perdue, who prides herself on her health care background, as saying she never believed the reforms would work. That would have been nice to know sometime in 2001 before the General Assembly passed the legislation creating the reforms. Or maybe even in the next few years after that, as the mental health system was abandoning families across the state who needed services.

Perdue also told Clark that “accountability stops at the governor’s desk.”  Wonder where the responsibility to speak up to protect people with mental illness from devastating reform stops?

 

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.