DOT chief 'surprised' by NC Treasurer's I-485 concerns

N.C. Secretary of Transportation Gene Conti said Wednesday he was puzzled by state Treasurer Janet Cowell's statement Tuesday expressing concern about a design-build-finance program to start work on the remaining portion of I-485 around Charlotte. As reporter Mark Johnson noted, Cowell's office said the lack of a contract specifying terms and conditions of the novel financing and construction plan left the Department of State Treasurer, as spokeswoman Melissa Waller put it, "unable to determine if there are issues or concern."

Conti said in a telephone conversation that it "came as a surprise that she[Cowell] decided to go public" with her reservations. The Perdue administration, he said, had held a number of discussions with the state Department of Justice and Attorney General Roy Cooper's office as well as with Cowell's staff. While the treasurer's staff had a number of questions during those talks, Conti said, Cowell's public stance had surprised him. "I still don't understand exactly" what she meant, he said. Conti said the Perdue administration was "fully committed" to moving forward on the project and also said, "We don't see any obstacles to doing it."

GOP keeps primaries open to unaffiliated voters

State Republican leaders wisely came to their senses over the weekend and short-circuited a plan to bar unaffiliated voters from participating in Republican primaries. My colleague Rob Christensen noted in Dome that the GOP Executive Committee rejected the proposal to narrow the Republican primary only to registered Republicans. He reported that Republican legislative caucus leaders wrote the committee that "For a Republican candidate to win an election in North Carolina, the candidate must build a coalition with unaffiliated voters. Barring unaffiliated voters from participating in Republican primaries will make building that coalition more difficult."

Polls have shown, he added, that most unaffiliated voters regard themselves as either conservative (38 percent) or moderate (37 percent) meaning they identify with ideological trains of thought but don't register in either party.

The plan to bar unaffiliated voters was pursued by some who want to make sure the Republican Party represents only true conservatives and not the kinds of moderate Republicanism that strongly conservative leaders want to root out of the party. That kind of thought led to the party's recent loss of a seat in New York, when conservatives purified a congressional race by running off one Republican candidate, only to see Democrats win the seat.

This move was baffling to me. I always thought Republicans in this state were much smarter than the Democrats when they first agreed to allow unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in the Republican primary. Democrats didn't do that for a while. I realized the Republicans were getting unaffiliated votes used to the idea of casting votes for Republicans -- an idea that at the time was still new to a lot of voters in North Carolina who had not voted Republican in previous elections. In time, Democrats also allowed unaffiliated voters to announce at polls on primary day which primary they wanted to vote in. Based on voter registration, after all, the unaffiliated category is where a lot of the voter registration growth has been.

The Parkway's many fathers -- and fans

Sunday's column about the Blue Ridge Parkway and the need to boost maintenance and preserve vistas brought several responses -- including one that pointed out I should have credited Josephus Daniels rather than Jonathan Daniels as a principal player in bringing the parkway route through Western North Carolina instead of Tennessee, as a parkway study committee had recommended.
While Josephus Daniels was Ambassador to Mexico at the time, he was an influential adviser to President Roosevelt, having been close friends since the days of the Woodrow Wilson administration when Daniels was Secretary of the Navy and Roosevelt was his assistant secretary. Jonathan Daniels, Josephus' son,was also a parkway supporter. He became an adviser to Roosevelt in 1941, well after the parkway route decision had been made.

Susan Jackson Mills, executive director of the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, wrote:

Did you know:
·that FRIENDS of the Blue Ridge Parkway’s nationally known program is Save Parkway Views?
·that where land trust groups cannot secure the land that abuts the Parkway that FRIENDS has planted thousands of trees by thousands of volunteers.
·that as the celebration was kicked off in NC that FRIENDS was planting trees in Virginia on both Friday and Saturday to save Parkway views.


A Charlotte reader wrote:

I enjoyed your column on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I moved to Charlotte a few years ago and have taken a couple of trips on the Parkway (Asheville to Boone sections) including a recent one with my mother. She was from Chicago and went on a honeymoon drive on the Parkway in 1957 and had never been back till last year. She was struck by the number of trees and the lack of views with the exception of the overlooks. In your column you mentioned you were on the parkway in the 50's. Is that your memory as well that the length of the parkway was mainly tree free with vista's from every bend?
A problem with the Parkway now is that too many of the overlooks are getting overgrown with trees. (You noted this as well) I am sure we are way past cutting trees along the length of the parkway but what is the problem cutting a few trees at the overlooks? Is the problem dollars or is it environmental? (I am not talking about full scale logging just pruning a few trees in the overlooks where they are encroaching on the view.)

Another reader recalled the contributions of former U.S. Rep. Robert "Muley Bob" Doughton of Allegheny County, a farmer so popular with his constituents that he won 21 terms in the House, serving from 1911 to 1953. It was Doughton for whom Doughton Park -- the largest park and recreational area on the parkway -- is named. Doughton is also credited for having steered the Social Security Act through Congress in 1935. He was also said to be mighty tight with the taxpayers' buck. My friend Ralph Grizzle once recalled that he liked to warn his colleagues, "You can shear a sheep year after year, but you can take his hide only once."

And Joe Epley, the former Charlotte newspaperman and public relations firm executive, reported in from Tryon:

As a trustee of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, I applaud your column in Sunday’s Charlotte Observer. Thank you for making a case about the Parkway’s dilemma and critical need for adequate funding.
We in the Foundation are working diligently to help preserve and enhance the Parkway’s beauty and uniqueness. That’s why more than 25,000 cars in North Carolina support Parkway with the special Blue Ridge Parkway tag. Twenty dollars of each tag fee goes to the Foundation to benefit the Parkway.
When I was a child back in the 1940s, I remember my favorite treat was having my father drive the family up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I then took my children there as often as I could, and later, I gave my grandchildren the same thrill. It is one of America’s great treasures.

Perdue's popularity numbers improve

Gov. Bev Perdue has had a tough year in the opinion polls, with her popularity sliding about as fast as the unemployment rolls and the state budget deficit have risen. Things got so bad at one point that she shook up her communications leadership, hiring Pearse Edwards away from Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire and bringing him back to North Carolina to be her communications and policy advisor. Not long ago Perdue also made headlines when she opposed the imminent parole of inmates who had been sentenced to life in prison for violent crimes, including murder, which may have struck a positive chord with voters.

Now two different polls have shown Perdue's approval ratings have improved, at least a little. Last week, the Civitas poll found improved results. Dome reported that "43 percent of state residents approved of the job Gov. Bev Perdue was doing at the end of October, a surge of 14 points from earlier in the month." But Dome also noted that Civitas' Chris Hayes detected a difference between performance and their view of the governor: "Even if her job approval has ticked up, people still don't have a good feeling about her," he told Dome.

The Civitas poll is available at www.nccivitas.org.

Meanwhile, on Monday Public Policy Polling also found better results for Perdue. Analyst Tom Jensen notes:

For the first time since June Bev Perdue's approval rating is out of the 20s. 30% of North Carolinians express support for her work this month with 49% disapproving and 22% unsure.
The positive movement for Perdue is largely a result of the Democratic base warming back up to her a little bit. Where last month more voters within her party disapproved than approved of her work, now 46% give her good marks with only 32% disapproving. She continues to suffer from pretty paltry ratings with independents and Republicans though- 24 and 11% approval respectively.
Perdue has consistently received better marks in the Triangle than the rest of the state. While part of that can be attributed to the region being more Democratic the difference is so large it can't be traced to that alone. She has 41% approval here compared to 22-32% everywhere else. This could be chalked up to Perdue's being much more visible here, particularly on the tv news, and that the more people see her the more likely they are to really think she's attuned to the state's problems. Improving visibility in the rest of the state could go a long way toward bringing up Perdue's overall numbers.
There are also some indications in this month's findings that while Perdue is certainly in a difficult place, the hole is not too large to climb out of. Asked to assign her a letter grade the most common response, from 28% of respondents, was to give Perdue a 'C.' That's an indication there is a lot of ambiguity in voters' feelings toward Perdue and that while they lean toward disapproving of her right now getting their support back over the next three years is not an impossibility.
Only 35% of voters give her a D or F, suggesting they're gone forever, compared to 40% who rate Barack Obama that poorly. It is certainly true that few voters love Perdue- just 15% giving her A's as opposed to 32% who do the same for Obama- but you don't necessarily have to be loved to be reelected.
There's not much doubt if Perdue had to stand for reelection today she'd be toast. The first year has not been particularly successful in the court of public opinion. But she's not 'done for,' so long as she can learn lessons from the difficulties so far and use that experience to do things different in the future. Whether she's capable of that kind of adaptation remains to be seen.

This analysis is also available on PPP's blog:

http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2009/11/perdue-back-up-to-30.html

Hunt, Rand, power and paroles

Ben Niolet of the News & Observer noted in Dome the other day that Chris Hayes of the Civitas Institute had turned up an interesting factoid questioning how long Sen. Tony Rand, D-Cumberland and the Senate's majority leader as well as rules committee chair, has contemplated taking a job on the parole commission. Rand surprised almost everyone a week ago when he announced he would step down from the Senate by year's end -- and a short while later Gov. Bev Perdue announced she would name him chairman of the NC Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission. It's a full-time job that pays $100,000.

Here's what Ben posted on Dome, followed by a recollection about Gov. Jim Hunt and how he remade the parole commission early in his first term as governor when he discovered he didn't have any immediate openings on the commission to name appointees to:

Rand's retirement plan?
How long has Sen. Tony Rand been thinking about leaving the state Senate for the state's parole board?
Civitas' Chris Hayes has dug up an interesting fact. In 2005, Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat, sponsored a bill that would have changed the structure of the Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission. Rand's bill meant to change the panel from three full-time members to one full-time member and two part-time members.
The bill passed the Senate unanimously on April 13, 2005 and was later incorporated into the 2005 budget bill to be signed into law.
I guess the question becomes, is this just a coincidence or did Rand have this all planned out years ago?
On the other hand, Rand was a powerful force in the Senate and has his name attached to an overwhelming majority of bills that were adopted.

As I've noted previously, back in 1977, when Hunt was in his first year as governor and I had just arrived in Raleigh as capital correspondent for the Greensboro Daily News, the parole commission was chaired and staffed by appointees of Republican Gov. Jim Holshouser, who had served from 1973-1977. Instead of waiting for vacancies to occur, Hunt's allies in the legislature went right to the point. They introduced and passed legislation that abolished the old parole commission and then created a new parole commission whose appointees would serve at the pleasure of the governor. It was an exercise in the wielding of quick power -- so much so that when the bill was introduced, I called then-Parole Commission Chairman Jack Scism for a comment, only to find out that neither Scism nor any of his colleagues knew the bill was coming or what it did.

Should veterans get a holiday on Veterans Day?

It's Veterans Day, and across the land the military veteran is being honored with department store sales, parades, memorial services, thoughtful editorials, wreath-laying services, grand speeches, solemn ceremonies and a holiday -- a holiday, that is, as long as you work for a government agency. Some private and non-government employers also give the day off, to be sure. But take a look around: What you'll see is what you normally see in America: Those who have jobs are working today, including millions of veterans who served stateside and around the world, in foreign conflicts and in peacetime.

The sad fact is that veterans are honored mostly with lip service. Of course, giving a veteran the day off is not the only way to properly honor a vet's service. There are many ways to honor them, and I've never heard a veteran complain publicly about this. Most of them simply do what they did in the service: they do their jobs and they move on. But a holiday for veterans as well as for their fellow Americans would more completely recognize the sacrifice and commitment of veterans and their families. A holiday for all veterans on Veterans Day, too often honored as an afterthought in a too-busy world, would show those who served under arms that their service is truly appreciated.

Perdue's pledge on I-485

Gov. Bev Perdue's announcement Monday of a new financing plan to begin construction of the last remaining portions of I-485 around Charlotte before the end of the year is an example of why folks have learned not to bet against Perdue. When she pledged back in February to start construction by the end of the year and finish it within a few years, it was obviously a risky pledge. The reason was simple: There was little if any money available, and the economy was on a long downhill slide. As Deputy DOT Secretary Susan Coward noted in a memo, "it is highly likely that all of these projects will be delayed due to lack of funding."


It reminded me of former Gov. Jim Hunt's promise back in 1996 to cut the travel time for a new Raleigh-Charlotte passenger train from nearly four hours to two hours -- by the time he left office. It was an audacious pledge, and one that would surely cause travelers to flock to the train. The state has steadily trimmed time from the train schedule over the ensuing 13 years, but it isn't close to a two-hour trip yet. It can take millions of dollars to trim a minute or so from the schedule -- and making trains run faster at the same time you're rebuilding tracks and making seven stops is incredibly difficult. Even with great steps forward, the trip now takes three hours and 12 minutes from Raleigh to Charlotte.

When I talked with Pat Simmons, head of N.C. DOT's Rail Division back in May, he said everyone had learned a lot since Hunt made that two-hour pledge.

We didn't get there," he said, "but we have made a lot of progress."
And I wrote: "I wouldn't bet against Perdue. But if the hoped-for funding doesn't come through, there is precedent for this approach: No, we didn't keep our promise, but we sure made some progress."
This deal still isn't done. As Perdue acknowledged in a meeting Monday with the Observer's editorial board, she may be on the phone next week with firms urging them to participate in the design/build/finance method of infrastructure construction that other states such as Texas have used.
It's a novel thing here in what used to be called The Good Roads State. It would require construction firms to participate in financing the project -- split into three sections -- and get paid back over 10 years. It might mean the freeway would be finished by 2015 instead of just being started by then.
But you've got to give her credit for coming up with a plan that might jump-start the I-485 completion. I wouldn't bet against her on this one, either.