Fitzsimon File

No one can blame Governor Beverly Perdue for trying to figure out how to help her approval rating, which was hovering around 25 percent in polls this fall before rising to the still icy 30 percent last month.

That's one thing politicians do, try to stay popular, especially if they have plans to seek reelection someday. And it's not surprising that Perdue is focusing on Charlotte, the state's largest city and the home of her Republican opponent in 2008 and likely opponent in 2012, former mayor Pat McCrory.

If there's one thing the movers and shakers in Charlotte want from Raleigh, it is the completion of the I-485 outer loop around the city, which has been delayed for years, though it's not the only transportation project that hasn't been finished as promised.

Last month Perdue went to Charlotte to make a grand announcement. She proclaimed that the I-485 loop would be completed with a new financing scheme for the $340 million project called design-build-finance. The construction company would finance as much as $50 million, which the state would repay in ten years.

Perdue's staff said that State Treasurer Janet Cowell and Attorney General Roy Cooper endorsed the plan and Perdue was briefly the toast of the Queen City.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the outer loop. It turns out that Cowell has serious reservations about the plan, not the least of which is that the state doesn't have the debt capacity to borrow $50 million. 

Perdue's staff first claimed that Cowell had not objected to the scheme, but emails from her office obtained by the Charlotte Observer showed Cowell and her staff were concerned about the financing plan from the beginning, a point Cowell re-emphasized recently.

Perdue's handlers then claimed that Attorney General Roy Cooper was on board, only to have his office say that they were never presented with a specific proposal to approve.  Then, as the Observer reported, officials in Perdue's Department of Transportation said they were going ahead with the project anyway and hadn't planned to ask Cooper what he thought.

The whole episode raises several issues, the most important of which for the people of Charlotte is whether the financing plan is legal. The state constitution says incurring debt requires a vote of the people, though the General Assembly has managed to find ways around that in recent years.

But at least in the legislature, there is a vote and theoretically the possibility of some reasoned deliberations and opportunity for public input.  Perdue's plan allows her to sign the state up for a $50 million loan unilaterally, like she has a giant credit card.

And even if the plan is legal, is it the right thing to do, no matter how badly Charlotte leaders want their loop finished? That's a debate that needs to happen somewhere. We need to hear more than sniping between the staffs of Council of State members.

But the most difficult thing to understand is how Perdue could make a big announcement and claim the support of two top state officials without really having it. Don't they have meeting rooms in the Administration Building?

Maybe it was simply that Perdue couldn't wait to deliver the good news to the muckety-mucks in the state's largest city, making one of their dreams come true.  It doesn't inspire much confidence that top state officials don't appear to be talking much to each other. 

It's also worrisome that Perdue is so eager to do something positive that she put the press conference before the cart.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.