Charlotte’s former-mayor-turned-governor reaches back to undermine transit efforts in his home city, and more anti-environmental legislation is filed in Raleigh. This week in CIB:

• Executive Watch: Backwards on Transit
• Legislative Watch: Repeal ’em All
• North of the Border: Bill Dies, Uranium Mining Push Fading?
• Washington Watch: EPA Proposes 2013 Renewable Fuel Standards

Executive Watch: Backwards on Transit

The man who as mayor led Charlotte’s successful entry into modern passenger rail connections now seems determined as governor to interfere with his old home city’s continued progress on that front.

Governor Pat McCrory told Charlotte’s current leaders last week that they risked loss of state funding for the city’s commuter light rail line extension, if the city moves forward with plans to extend its streetcar system. McCrory reportedly raised the streetcar subject on his own initiative while meeting with Charlotte city staff to discuss the city’s efforts to raise funds to renovate its NFL football stadium.

From a policy standpoint, the McCrory threat makes no sense. Commuter light rail and streetcars are functionally distinct, but related in purpose. Light rail is designed to operate in a dedicated corridor from which cars and other vehicles are excluded, and to move commuters from home to work or on similar longer trips.

Streetcars, on the other hand, operate on rails embedded into surface streets shared with other traffic, move more slowly and stop more frequently, and are designed to move people around a central business/downtown area. Streetcars also encourage the use of commuter light rail by enabling people to get around a destination district without the need for a car or taxi.

Both systems operate to influence travel patterns and–even more importantly–development patterns. Where a fixed rail system is in use for passenger service, new residential and commercial development is drawn to cluster around its service area and stops. Rail transit is a powerful anti-sprawl tool, serving that important environmental purpose as well as promoting more efficient economic development. Both commuter light rail and streetcars reinforce the direction of urban growth toward city centers, rather than eating up green space and farmland by sprawling beyond the suburban edge.

Therefore, McCrory’s distinction between (theoretically) continuing to support light rail while opposing streetcar extension is logically inconsistent on a policy basis. Why, then, might it be the new governor’s emphatic policy position?

To some observers on the receiving end of the governor’s pressure, it has the smell of politics. Current Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, who succeeded McCrory as mayor, told the Charlotte Observer that he was “outraged” by the governor’s attempted intervention in a local decision. The streetcar extension under discussion in Charlotte would rely on local property taxes for funding, not state money.

While McCrory has indicated that he didn’t think local property taxes should be used for streetcars, he previously supported using property taxes to pay for a light rail line extension. More, in discussing the proposal for a local tax hike to pay for improving the Charlotte NFL stadium, McCrory’s press secretary said that the governor “believes that local leaders should make decisions on local issues.” Both stands seem inconsistent with his active attempt to undermine local efforts to extend the streetcar system.

Observers note that current Mayor Foxx, a Democrat and potential political rival of Republican Governor McCrory on the wider public stage, is the leading backer of the streetcar expansion. Foxx and McCrory were political rivals in Charlotte politics, and clearly remain rivals now. It is also possible that McCrory sees vehement opposition to the streetcar project as a way to be less offensive to the anti-rail crowd among his political backers, short of withdrawing his support from all light rail projects.

In any event, the McCrory position represents a dash of cold water onto his reputation as a supporter of modern passenger rail. It is a disappointment to those who hoped that in transportation policy, at least, he would be a voice of progress for environmentally-friendly policy.

To read more about this dispute, see here and here.

Legislative Watch: Repeal ’em All

Oh heck, why mess around with piecemeal “regulatory reform”?

That seems to be the gist of a new bill introduced last week in the N.C. Senate. SB 32, “Periodic Review and Expiration of Rules”, would simply expire all existing state rules automatically at regular intervals, requiring a full rulemaking process from scratch to re-implement any regulation. The bill sponsor is Sen. Fletcher Hartsell (R-Cabarrus).

Health and environmental rules are singled out for special early attention. Rules in those areas would begin expiring first, with anything in those categories not adopted or amended since 2007 expiring at the end of 2016 or 2017. In other words, established tougher environmental protection standards would be thrown out wholesale under the current administration (or before they could be renewed in the first year of the next one).

If nothing else, this approach would require regulatory agencies such as DENR to spend so much of their shrinking resources on trying to maintain minimal controls on water and air pollution that any affirmative effort to improve public health protections would be permanently choked off.

As this proposal moves to consideration, we may have suggestions for its legislative short title: “Expiration of Pollution Control”, or perhaps simply “Natural Death”.

North of the Border: Bill Dies, Uranium Mining Push Fading?

Last week, we reported that a key Virginia county had spoken out in opposition to the proposal to begin mining uranium in southern Virginia. Since then, the leading legislative proposal to authorize that move has been withdrawn in the face of certain defeat in a Virginia state legislative committee.

The bill’s withdrawal represented a major setback for a multi-year effort to lift Virginia’s current ban on uranium mining. The proposal has had significant backing from energy company interests and some state legislators, but it also ran into bipartisan legislative opposition and a broad coalition of opponents, both statewide and local to the directly affected areas. Opponents are concerned about the potential for severe water contamination from radioactive mine tailings, as well as the adverse economic impacts which the risk of such contamination would bring. The issue is also of particular concern to North Carolinians in the watershed of the Roanoke River downstream from potential mining sites.

Supporters of uranium mining indicated that they would keep trying to win approval of the change, and are asking Virginia’s governor to order the drafting of regulations to govern uranium mining in the event the legislature changes its mind. However, opponents of the mining declared victory and predicted that the push would fade.

An account of the most recent legislative action, and comments from multiple sources, can be found here.

Further comment and analysis from environmental advocates can be found here.

Washington Watch: EPA Proposes 2013 Renewable Fuel Standards

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week released its proposed 2013 percentage standards for the four fuel categories that are part of the EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard program. (Fuels covered include biodiesel, ethanol, and advanced biofuels.) The standards are designed to continue an increase in the amount of biofuels included in the American energy market, mandated by federal statute to reach 36 billion gallons a year by 2022.

The proposal will be open for a 45-day public comment period which began January 31. More information can be found here.

That’s our report for this week.