I-77 South toll law puts Charlotte region on the spot

HERBERT L. WHITE | THE CHARLOTTE POST

A new North Carolina law would withhold millions of dollars in transportation funding from Charlotte-area municipalities that refuse to withdraw opposition to the I-77 South toll lane project.

A new state law that requires municipalities that backed away from the I-77 South toll project presents a dilemma.

Repay $60 million for design work and return to a deeply unpopular public-private initiative. Refuse and lose access to state and federal transportation funds. Or, perhaps, challenge the law’s constitutionality in court. Charlotte City Council, which represents 41% of the regional authority that pulled support for the project, hasn’t met to discuss the law or the city’s options.

HB 1094, an omnibus transportation bill signed into law July 8 by Gov. Josh Stein, requires members of the Charlotte regional transportation organization to reimburse the North Carolina Department of Transportation for the project’s design phase. State Sen. Vickie Sawyer, a Republican who represents Iredell County and north Mecklenburg, announced her opposition to the toll project, authored the reimbursement amendment.

“I want to be very clear: the punitive provision in the amendment was not my idea,” Sawyer, who co-chairs of the Senate Transportation Committee, wrote in a June 17 email to Sean Langley, president of the McCrorey Heights Neighborhood Association. “It is part of the broader budget agreement supported by legislative leadership. I included it in my amendment so that you and other stakeholders would have complete and transparent information as you plan for the future.

“Please also keep in mind that the Towns of Davidson and Cornelius, which are also in my district, stand to lose significant funding once the budget passes. My goal was to warn and inform our communities.”

Charlotte City Council member Victoria Watlington, who was in the 6-5 majority to rescind support, said the law is misplaced. In addition to Watlington, J.D. Mazuera Arias, Malcolm Graham, Renee Johnson, LaWana Mayfield and Joi Mayo voted to end the project. Dante Anderson, Dimple Ajmera, Ed Driggs, Kimberly Owens and James Mitchell voted to continue.

“I wish that we put this kind of energy into actually finding solutions for our folks, rather than pushing special interest groups’ concerns at the expense of the broader community,” she said. “But I say all that to say that at this point, it’s really about information gathering. As I understand it, right now the way the law is set up, there’s a couple of provisions in there that talks about Gov. Stein’s ability to work with NCDOT to determine whether we unilaterally made a decision or whether we were following the public process, so I certainly will be interested to hear their take in regard to it.”

Based on the proportionality of the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, Charlotte is responsible for a plurality of the reimbursement. Mecklenburg County and Matthews also voted to oppose the project. Monroe’s city council originally supported recission, then reversed course to avoid exposure to the penalty.

Opponents of the toll project see the law as an unlawful attempt to force municipalities to reverse course under threat of sanctions that includes withholding future state and federal transportation funding until NCDOT is repaid.

Attaching sanctions to CRTPO’s position, critics contend, circumvents the will of local voters who demanded transparency from the state in crafting a plan that spared neighborhoods – primarily black communities in west Charlotte – of displacement that occurred in the 1960s with previous projects.

“I don’t know if I would call it blackmail,” Watlington said. “I think I’ve seen it described as extortion. I can certainly see why there are members of the community who have characterized it that way. What I can say is that it’s absolutely that practice. It’s punitive. It potentially places all of our federal dollars in the state of North Carolina at risk, and it serves

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