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Sales tax vote for transit years away if bill passes
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Published: July 8, 2009
It will likely be a minimum of two years before Triad residents would be asked to support a half-cent sales tax to support transportation, a transit official said Wednesday.
A bill in the General Assembly would give Guilford and Forsyth counties — as well as counties in the Triangle — the option to place a referendum on the ballot for the half-cent tax that could be used for improving public transportation such as bus routes or light rail.
Brent McKinney, the executive director of the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation, said even if the measure passes, it would likely be at least two years before such a referendum would be placed on the ballot.
McKinney said the time would be used to develop a well-defined program to show taxpayers how the money would be used. He said it would also be difficult to ask voters to boost the sales tax at a time when the state and local governments are struggling to come up with money to pay their bills.
"Now is just not a good environment to put a tax into effect," McKinney said.
The bill passed the House earlier this year and is now in the Senate.
Kevin Leonard, a legislative coordinator for the N.C. Association of County Commissioners, said he expects the bill to pass this year, but it may change before it is approved.
In addition to the half-cent referendum for the Triad and the Triangle, the bill would also allow the state's remaining counties to propose a referendum for a quarter-cent tax for public transit.
Leonard said the bill appears to have broad support but that some key members — notably Sen. Dan Clodfelter, D-Mecklenburg — want to remove the quarter-cent option for counties not in the Triad or Triangle.
PART passed a resolution in support of the bill earlier this year.
Becky Smothers, a member of the PART board and the mayor of High Point, criticized the bill for defining the Triad as consisting of only Forsyth and Guilford counties.
"It's just plain lack of geography sense," she said.
Forsyth County Commissioner Gloria Whisenhunt, a vice chairwoman of PART, said she worries the sales-tax referendum bill would be combined with a bill that would turn over the maintenance of secondary roads from the states to the counties. That bill is contentious, and if were to be combined it would likely mean the sales-tax referendum measure would not pass this year.
Whisenhunt agreed with McKinney that even if the referendum measure passes, it may be tough to get voters to agree to a new tax.
"In the environment we're in right now, I'm not sure they would," she said.
Paul Garber can be reached at 727-7327 or at pgarber@wsjournal.com.
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