Dear Gov. Perdue, House Speaker Hackney, Senate President Pro Tem (corrected, with apologies) Basnight:
Your state Board of Transportation is ridiculous. Got your attention? Good. Here’s why I say that:
I just received an e-mailed press release from my friends at the N.C. Department of Transportation, about committee assignments for that august body, the N.C. Board of Transportation. I had lost track of who my local representatives on the board are, so I decided to check it out. I popped up the online roster for the state transportation board, a body that has major sway in allocating state transportation money. Guess what I see. Charlotte – by far the state’s largest city and largest urban area – has only one member: Developer John Collett.
Of the 14 divisions, we in Division 10 (Mecklenburg, Anson, Stanly, Cabarrus and Union counties – population 1,374,357) have exactly the same number of NCDOT board members as Division 14 – Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Polk, Swain and Transylvania counties – population 338,405. Notice how that’s a little more than a third of the population of Mecklenburg alone (913,639).
Now obviously Division 14 needs representation, too. I’m not saying it doesn’t. Rural areas shouldn’t be overlooked just because they’re small. But that doesn’t make it right, or smart, to overlook urban areas just because they’re big.
So let’s take a look at the at-large members of the board, who are supposed to represent various interests. Let’s see, there’s an at-large member for State Ports and Aviation Issues. So it makes sense for that rep to be Leigh McNairy (again, corrected, with apologies) from Kinston, right? Sure, Kinston has no port, but at least it’s on the Neuse River, isn’t it? Only thing is, the state’s ports are in City and Wilmington, neither of which has a rep on the DOT board.
Is it because of Kinston’s vast airport – the state’s busiest, and US Airways’ largest hub and all that? Oops, I forgot! That would be Charlotte. There’s even a Ports Authority Inland Terminal in Charlotte, ahem.
(If you give up on that Kinston mystery, here’s a clue. The state-funded Global TransPark – a yet-to-bear-fruit effort that attempted to revive all of Eastern North Carolina by building a big airfield – is in Kinston. Well, now there’s a parts factory there, too. Whew. I was starting to get worried that that Kinston appointment didn’t make any sense.)
There’s an at-large member for “rural issues.” The position appears to be unfilled. Hmm, I wonder who’s the at-large member for “urban issues.” Guess what. There isn’t one. But don’t cities have urban-style issues in much the way rural areas have rural-style issues? Don’t they deserve some attention too? Gov. Perdue, please hop on this.
There’s an at-large member for environmental issues. Good! That’s forward thinking. That member is from Raleigh, Nina Szlosberg-Landis. So the cities in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) get two board slots, because the District 5 member, Chuck Watts, is from Durham.
There’s an at-large member for government-related finance and accounting issues (huh?). He’s Ronnie Wall from Burlington.
Aha. Here’s an at-large member for mass transit. Since Charlotte has the only light rail transit system in the state, and is the only city with funding to build the state’s only streetcar system, and has the largest bus system and the only dedicated sales tax for transit in the state, it makes all kinds of sense that the at-large member for transit is – Andrew Perkins, from Greensboro?
And that gives the cities in the Triad (Greenboro, Winston-Salem and High Point) two board members as well, since the District 9 member is Ralph Womble from Winston-Salem.
Throwing aside the ridiculous way in which the DOT districts are configured (dating to where the state prisons were located, and I am not making that up), it’s fair for all sections of the state to have voices on the board. But it isn’t fair for people in cities to be disproportionately voiceless.
Charlotte and the state’s other cities are the economic engines of North Carolina. When they sink, the state’s economy sinks. That should be reflected in all state policies, not just transportation. It simply makes no sense that they get disproportionately tiny attention when it comes to transportation representation, or any other forms of representation.
I’m guessing the legislature can change those silly DOT districts. But when it comes time to make appointments, Gov. Perdue, Rep. Hackney and Sen. Basnight, could you please notice that your largest city – you know, the one with the busiest airport, the biggest traffic problems, the biggest mass transit system – might need a little more representation on your state transportation board?