Next stop for transit sales tax bill: Senate Finance Committee

This week the Senate will take up a House bill authorizing Triangle counties to pay for bus and rail transit improvements with a half-cent local sales tax. Sponsors say they have the votes to win.

The Senate Finance Committee will consider House Bill 148 at 1 p.m. Wednesday in Room 544 of the Legislative Office Building. If you can’t be there, you can listen online.

"Once the bill comes up, we have the votes," said Rep. Deborah Ross, a Raleigh Democrat and House sponsor.

The bill sets up state programs, but does not provide state funding, for railroad, aviation, ferry and transit improvements.

It gives five urban counties – Wake, Durham, Orange, Guilford, Forsyth – the option for a half-cent transit sales tax if approved by the county commissioners and by local voters in a referendum. And it gives other counties except Mecklenburg (which already has a transit sales tax) the option for a quarter-cent transit sales tax.

The measure cleared the House by 75 to 40 in April.

They are resisting a push by Sen. Dan Clodfelter of Mecklenburg to eliminate the quarter-cent option for non-urban counties.

“Every county ought to have the option,” said Wake Sen. Richard Stevens, a Cary Republican, the lead Senate sponsor. Stevens was at home, recuperating from a fall in his garage that broke his knee in three places. “We’re all one state, but we have different needs.

“Where Charlotte may need trains, we may need buses first here in the Triangle. On the coast they might need better ferry service,” Stevens said.

The tax would raise about $90 million a year in Wake, Durham and Orange counties, enough to jump start a 25-year plan for 300 new buses and more than 50 miles of electric-powered light rail.

Triangle counties also could increase from $5 to $8 the car registration fee that supports transit. Research Triangle Park employers also would have the option to raise about $4 million a year in property taxes for transit.

Ross said suburban counties need transit service too.

“Particularly some of the counties that are adjacent to the major urban areas,” Ross said. “It would be a shame if we didn’t give them a way to pay for their links into urban areas.”

If it passes the Senate Finance Committee, the bill will go to the Senate floor.