State Treasurer Janet Cowell has raised a possible roadblock to plans to speed completion of Interstate 485 in northern Mecklenburg County.
Cowell's office issued a statement late Tuesday expressing uncertainty about the funding mechanism to finish the long-unlinked loop, a plan that was announced with great ceremony by Gov. Bev Perdue two weeks ago while standing at the unfinished end of the highway.
"In the absence of contracts specifying terms and conditions of the 485 project, we are unable to determine if there are issues or concerns," Melissa Waller, Cowell's spokeswoman, said in a prepared statement. "We continue to advise the Governor's Office and the Department of Transportation on the various options available for this important project."
Perdue responded two hours later with a statement saying the financing plan had been vetted.
"Prior to announcing the plan, we worked with the[Attorney General Roy Cooper's] office as we developed the design-build-finance program for completing I-485," Perdue said in the statement. "During this process, the Attorney General's office indicated that our plan was legal."
Cooper's spokeswoman, Noelle Talley, said their office does not discuss its legal advice. Cowell, Perdue and Cooper are all Democrats.
Perdue's statement suggested she wasn't about to put on the brakes.
"We are excited to see contractors express interest for this project," she said, "that will save taxpayer dollars and complete the loop as quickly as possible."
Cowell may not have authority to stop the plan, but her approval matters because she issues the state's debt and oversees the state's debt load, determining how much it can afford to borrow.
Any glitch in the I-485 plan would create difficulty for Perdue, who has already had to back away once this year from a promise to accelerate work on closing the loop.
Perdue's plan for finishing the last five miles of the highway, estimated to cost $340 million, calls for the contractors to finance $50 million of the construction on their own, with the state backing the debt and paying the companies back over 10 years.
Cowell is the only one who can issue debt, in the form of bonds, for the state. What's unclear is whether Cowell would have any authorityover the state vouching for the debt of a private contractor money is borrowed to finance the highway.
An additional question is whether the state guaranteeing a contractor's loan would be counted against the state's debt capacity. That's something that could affect how much it costs the state to borrow money, because national rating agencies look at the debt load when they decide how to rate the state's bonds. Those ratings help determine the interest rate on the bonds.
