After flip-flopping, NC lawmakers say towns can't shift roadwork costs to schools

North Carolina cities won't be able to shift the cost of millions of dollars of road improvements on to school districts, after state legislators flip-flopped three times on the issue in a less than three-week period.

Between Memorial Day and Friday, state legislators approved three separate bills that included conflicting wording on whether towns could make approval of school projects contingent upon them not having to reimburse schools for road improvements.

Behind the scenes, municipalities and school districts lobbied legislators. On Friday, legislators sided with school districts.

The issue of road improvements around school construction projects is a long-running source of tension in North Carolina.

Towns say schools should have to pay for all the road improvements needed because of the additional traffic that will be generated by the new schools.

But school districts have complained that the road improvements requested have been excessive.

Lawmakers sought to resolve the issue last year by saying that towns would reimburse schools for municipally mandated road improvements. The state Department of Transportation was directed to reimburse schools for state-mandated road improvements.

Lawmakers went a step further in this year's state budget by saying that towns can't make approval of projects contingent upon school systems waiving or reducing the reimbursement amount.

On Thursday, legislators approved a bill making technical corrections to the budget. One section repealed the language limiting the ability of towns to get the road reimbursements reduced.

But on Friday, legislators approved a different bill on regulatory reform. One section repeals the wording on road reimbursements that was in Thursday's bill, which would leave the original budget wording in place.

Both bills have gone to Gov. Roy Cooper for his approval.

This story was originally published June 18, 2018 at 3:22 PM with the headline "After flip-flopping, NC lawmakers say towns can't shift roadwork costs to schools."