County officials heading to lobby in Raleigh (The Daily Reflector)
By JOSH HUMPHRIES
Monday, April 5, 2010
County officials will travel to Raleigh today to make a case for leaving the transportation funding process alone.
The Pitt County Board of Commissioners reached a consensus Monday to send county staff to a General Assembly committee meeting where legislators will take comments on the methods by which funding is dispersed through the Department of Transportation.
Commissioner Tom Johnson added discussion of the item to the board’s morning meeting at the county office building.
“Show your displeasure with changing the equity formula and by doing so reducing the amount of funding in the east,” Johnson said.
County Manager Scott Elliot said a possible change using commuter miles in a funding formula would be unfairly advantageous to urban areas and hurt the counties of eastern North Carolina.
N.C. DOT funding is distributed through 14 divisions in the state; 25 percent of funding is distributed equally across all divisions, 25 percent is based on the number of miles in the division and the remaining 50 percent is based on the population of the division.
