Isley wants to shift TTA funds

The Raleigh councilman says the money should go toward roads and schools

City Council member Philip Isley wants to cut off local funding for the Triangle Transit Authority rail project so local governments will have a few million dollars more to spend for roads and schools.

TTA officials say the rail project isn't dead and needs local tax support. But they're starting to look for other options, including private funding sources.

Isley says it appears that the federal government will not help pay for the $810 million rail project. The City Council on Tuesday will consider his proposal to ask the legislature to redirect some of TTA's local tax revenues to help address problems he calls more pressing.

"I think right now we have a short-term need for road funds, and we'd like to see that money utilized where our current needs are," Isley said in an interview Thursday. He cited the city's recent $60 million bond vote for street improvements and Wake County's school construction needs.

Thin local funding was one of several problems that the Federal Transit Administration cited in February when it delayed approval of the rail project for a second year. The agency said it would give TTA until Sept. 30 to satisfy its doubts about whether the trains would attract enough riders to justify the expense of construction, and whether TTA had the financial wherewithal to pay its share of construction and operation costs.

M. Carter Worthy of Raleigh, the TTA trustees' chairwoman, said the federal agency was working constructively with TTA on its proposal. She said that if the TTA bid fails, the FTA and TTA will work together "to find other ways to continue to leverage the large public investment that already has been made."

In a letter to legislators, Wake County commissioners and City Council members, Worthy said other options could include cutting the 28-mile line into shorter phases, working with freight railroads to use existing tracks or looking for private funds.

Last year, Congress called for a few pilot projects to explore options for public-private transportation ventures. Worthy said that TTA told federal officials it was interested in becoming one of these pilot projects.

"We broached it with them, and they encouraged us to pursue it," Worthy said in an interview.

She said TTA will not act alone in deciding on any new course of action.

"Whatever we do next has to have a lot of public input from citizens and community leaders," Worthy said. She is one of the TTA trustees appointed by the Raleigh City Council. Other city and county governments in Wake, Durham and Orange also are represented on the TTA board.

Isley's resolution, filed at the Raleigh council's Feb. 21 meeting, called for cutting off a $5 vehicle registration fee from Wake, Durham and Orange counties that gave TTA $4.9 million last year. He said that, after learning that TTA uses this money for its bus service, he would change his proposal to target TTA's other local money stream: a 5 percent tax on vehicle rentals, which generated $7.1 million last year.

Other local officials have expressed interest recently in TTA's money streams and have shown uncertainty about how the money is used. Tony Gurley, chairman of the Wake County commissioners, said in February that county officials had no role in levying the two local taxes and no power to control their use.

In fact, the General Assembly required the approval of all three county governments before TTA could receive the money. The Wake, Durham and Orange commissioners approved TTA's $5 car registration fee in 1991 and its 5 percent rental car tax in 1997. Gurley and five other commissioners were elected to Wake's board after those votes took place.

A legislative leader who has criticized the TTA project in the past is not ready to cut off funds for the rail project. State Sen. Clark Jenkins, an Edgecombe County Democrat who is co-chairman of a Senate-House transportation oversight panel, noted in a recent interview that the FTA is withholding its verdict until Sept. 30.

"I don't think we as the General Assembly should respond until TTA has had their final answer from the feds, which will be a September time frame," Jenkins said.