A plan to toll Capital Blvd is just a new tax to cover 15 years of Republican neglect | Opinion

There is currently a proposal under consideration to transform a 10-mile stretch of Capital Boulevard, from I-540 in Raleigh to Purnell Road in Wake Forest, into a limited-access highway by removing all traffic lights. This idea has been around since the early 2010s but delayed repeatedly due to funding issues. Now, residents are being told the only way to make it happen may be through a toll road.

Make no mistake, a toll road is just another tax — one that lands hardest on working families. It’s a tax brought on not by necessity, but by a decade and a half of failure from Republican leadership in the General Assembly.

This isn’t a policy debate — it’s the result of choices made in the legislature. Instead of investing in infrastructure, GOP lawmakers have prioritized corporate tax cuts and subsidizing private education for the wealthy. And now they want us to pay again, just so we can use a road our tax dollars should’ve already built.

All of this is happening while North Carolinians are feeling squeezed by inflation, the uncertainty of President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff policies and job losses triggered by DOGE and Elon Musk’s reckless cuts to federal funding and jobs. The last thing working families need is another bill to pay, especially for infrastructure the state should have funded long ago.

We’re going to pay for Capital Boulevard one way or another — whether through tolls, time stuck in traffic or lost productivity. But placing the burden directly on the backs of working families is not a solution. It’s failure dressed up as fiscal responsibility.

And we didn’t get here by accident. The Republican majority in the General Assembly has consistently prioritized tax giveaways to corporations and the wealthy over investments in our shared future. North Carolina’s corporate tax rate went from 2.5% in 2024 to 2.25% this year, with a drop to 2% coming in 2026. By 2030, it will be eliminated entirely, blowing a $2 billion hole in our budget. On top of that, the 2025–26 state budget sets aside $463.5 million for the Republicans’ taxpayer-funded private school voucher scheme, with plans to ramp that up to $825 million annually by 2032.

That’s money that we should be using to fix our crumbling infrastructure. The Capital Boulevard project is a $1.6 billion endeavor, but that’s just the beginning. Roughly one-third of North Carolina’s major roads are in poor condition. Approximately 7.5% of our bridges — around 1,350 in total - are rated structurally deficient, and the Department of Transportation estimates it will cost $4 billion just to replace those. The Department of Environmental Quality estimates that an additional $20 billion will be needed over the next two decades to address drinking water and wastewater systems. And that doesn’t even touch on our underfunded public schools, the overdue investments needed in community colleges, critical staffing shortages in child care, persistent state employee vacancies, a worsening housing crisis, or the long-term recovery of western North Carolina.

This is the cost of neglect. We see it every time we struggle to make an appointment at the DMV or sit pointlessly in traffic. North Carolina used to be a state that believed in building for the future. But that future is collapsing under the weight of self-interest and political cowardice. For a decade and a half, Republican lawmakers have coasted on the investments of past generations, while handing out favors and tax cuts to wealthy donors and well-connected private interests.

It’s time for responsible leadership. We need real investments in our state, in our people, and in our future.

That commitment to our future begins with fully funding the Capital Boulevard project — without tolls, without gimmicks and without taxing working families for the failures of those who refused to lead.