"Stupid Hats" or Thinking Caps? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Governor Pat McCrory's admonition for people not to put on their "stupid hat" during Hurricane Arthur was easily understood, timely and right on target. It started us thinking where else we might be wearing "stupid hats."

    No example is more egregious than our inattention and inaction regarding North Carolina's public infrastructure, especially our roads. With 100,000 new people moving here each year and a population now totaling roughly 10 million we must have a transportation network to move merchandise, get us to work and to recreation, but not only are we failing to build new roads we aren't doing a decent job of maintaining those we already have. The 1989 Highway Trust Fund, enacted to provide our transportation needs well into this century, placed the primary funding dependence on gas taxes. Even as it failed to provide the necessary funding we additionally yielded to cries about having the 9th highest gas taxes in the country and put a "stupid" cap on those taxes, with no alternative funding mechanism.

    A large number of our roads and bridges were built as a result of matching funds from the national Highway Trust Fund. For years our Congress has been arguing how to continue this program but like our state it cannot agree how to fund it. In September it is due to run out of money and will result in North Carolina's critical transportation problem becoming a full-blown crisis.

    It would be easy to place the blame on state leadership. After all, they have known the problem was growing for decades and one blue-ribbon commission after another has told us we have a funding problem. While we can accuse them of wearing "stupid hats" in refusing to lead us, the truth is they are largely responding to a loud and clear message from citizens screaming they don't want to pay any more taxes. Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo hit the nail on the head when he said that everyone wants better roads but nobody wants to pay for them.

    Those voices who have been telling us we can have roads and everything else if we will just cut the waste from state government will strike up another chorus of that tempting Siren song, but just as Circe warned Odysseus not to listen in Homer's Odyssey we must turn a deaf ear. We won't argue there are places where state budgets can be trimmed and we should pursue them with vigor, but the cold reality is that 85 cents of every dollar in state revenues is spent on education and health and human services. Neither the courts, the federal government nor the voters of this state are going to allow major changes in those numbers.

    So let's decide how we want to pay for our transportation network. There are options. Tolls, a tax charged on how many vehicle miles you travel each year, even higher gas taxes, increased sales taxes on vehicles or a combination would work but it's time to choose.

    We can pull our "stupid hats" down over our eyes but North Carolina's transportation problems won't go away; they will only get even worse and the delays will cost more. The hats we are currently wearing make us look really dumb. It's time to put on our thinking caps.

    Publisher's note: Tom Campbell is former assistant North Carolina State Treasurer and is creator/host of NC SPIN, a weekly statewide television discussion of NC issues airing Sundays at 11:00 am on WITN-TV. Contact Tom at NC Spin.