Legislative Watch: House Puts the Brakes on Budget
As the public and members of the NC House continue to study the snake’s nest of a budget that was rammed through the Senate this month, new drips of venom keep emerging.
Green transportation advocates identified a special section inserted into the budget to penalize local governments who try to plan new bicycle and pedestrian projects. Municipalities and counties can now receive planning grants for such projects from the state Department of Transportation (DOT). Under the amendment to the Senate budget (Section 34.22), if the recipient of a planning grant failed to complete each studied project within six years, they would have to return all the funds used for the study.
First, limited construction funding and slow state project processing time mean that it routinely takes more than six years to complete the set of projects described in a transportation plan. Second, under what sound planning principle is it considered a good idea to finalize what you’re going to do before you complete your study of the alternatives? None that we know about. Instead, this would appear to be yet another effort by someone(s) within the Senate leadership to discourage local governments from pursuing green transportation alternatives.
This is the kind of hidden damage that can be (and often is) tucked into 300-plus page budget bills revealed without public debate and passed in the dead of night. Even beyond the known major problems, such as big cuts to staffing at the Department of Environmental Quality, and a senseless moratorium on wind energy projects, smaller snakes lie hidden throughout the weeds. (We apologize to our reptilian wildlife for the analogy.)
Conservation advocates are pleased that House committees are taking their responsibilities seriously and going carefully through the budget with open eyes instead of rushing to hasty action. Our state’s environment and public health need that cautious approach.
