The McCrory administration will ask North Carolina voters to approve transportation and infrastructure bonds at a time when citizens in most (but not all) cities will elect mayors and council members. Holding the referendums this November also would ask voters statewide to cast ballots as many as five times over roughly one year.
“Within a 12-month period you’d have a statewide bond, a statewide presidential preference primary, you’d have a May primary, you’d potentially have a runoff primary, and then you’d have the general election,” said Josh Lawson, a spokesman for the State Board of Elections.
The law now in effect for the 2016 primaries breaks tradition. The state’s presidential preference primary would be decoupled from primaries for statewide and local offices. The presidential preference primary is scheduled for the first Tuesday after South Carolina’s primary, likely putting it in late February. A bill has been introduced in the state House moving that presidential preference primary to March 8, with the other primaries occurring in May.
Also, about one-third of the state’s voting precincts, primarily rural, would have to gear up for voters for an election officials had not anticipated.
“The state overall has about 2,700 precincts,” Lawson said. “About 1,000 of them do not have an election presently scheduled for them on Nov. 3.”
Moreover, eight counties currently have no elections scheduled for November.
A handful of municipalities and at least one county school board have scheduled October elections, with potential runoff dates in November.
Earlier this month in Durham, state Transportation Secretary Tony Tata told the North Carolina Chamber’s Transportation and Infrastructure Summit that the McCrory administration would push for the transportation bond in November 2015. He also said the governor wants another bond referendum, for state and higher education buildings and repairs, on the ballot. Each referendum is expected to authorize between $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion in borrowing.
Rep. John Torbett, R-Gaston, co-chairman of the House Transportation Committee, supports a November 2015 transportation bond referendum.
“The longer we wait, the worse things get,” Torbett said. “We owe, first and foremost, the citizens who owe the best that we can possibly give to them. Right now I’ve heard that beyond deserving, they’re demanding that we get our infrastructure back on line.”
David McLennan, visiting professor in the Political Science Department at Meredith College, noted that the governor may want to hold the referendum this fall rather than in 2016 for strategic reasons.
“It’s going to be a low turnout election if it is on the ballot this fall,” McLennan said. “There’ll be some places outside the cities where it will be the only thing on the ballot, [which] may help it pass.”
McLennan suggested turnout may be 10 percent or lower this fall.
The House has passed legislation in each of the past two sessions that would allow referendums like the one favored by the governor to be held only on primary or general election days in even-numbered years, when voter turnout is expected to be the highest. Both measures died in the Senate.
McLennan said turnout may be higher than usual if a lot of campaigning takes place supporting or opposing the bonds. He added that it’s far from certain the bonds would pass.
“It could be a risk for Gov. McCrory,” McLennan said of putting the measure before voters in a low-turnout environment. “[If] it goes down to defeat in 2015, that would make him appear weaker going into 2016” and his re-election campaign.
Meantime, it may be more difficult to get voters to focus on a bond referendum in 2016, with contests for president, U.S. senator, and governor on the ballot, along with congressional, legislative, and other state and local races.
Andy Taylor, assistant professor of political science at N.C. State University, said he doubts the governor is trying to influence the outcome of the bond referendum by scheduling it this November rather than waiting until next year.
“The governor seems to think that we need to move relatively quickly on these kind of projects, that they are important to the economy and can’t really wait,” Taylor said, agreeing with Torbett. “Pushing the bond back to even the primary or November 2016, that may be too late.”
Taylor said that McCrory has talked a lot about wanting to get these highway projects under construction immediately. “Waiting another year or waiting another six months undermines this argument,” Taylor said.
Torbett acknowledged that having referendums this fall would be a change for rural voters. “It would be one reason to go vote, as we should always go do.”
Tata told the N.C. Chamber that he was hopeful an early bond referendum would allow the DOT to take advantage of lower interest rates. “All the indications are that interest rates won’t stay where they are,” Tata said.
He said projects have already been identified.
“There are about 30 projects in this transportation bond,” Tata said. “And then we also have a prioritized way of ranking unpaved roads.” Tata said there are about 270 unpaved roads in the state, mostly in the western and eastern parts of the state.
Previously, the McCrory administration had indicated that the governor would not seek voter approval of the transportation bonds. In a “factsheet” sent out by McCrory’s office when he released his budget in March, the administration said it seek funding for the transportation undertakings through a “revenue bond,” which borrows against anticipated future revenues to the state but does not require voter approval. General obligation bonds, which pledge the taxing power of the state, do require voter approval.
Tata said that originally the administration was considering issuing a revenue bond.
“There are pros and cons from a credit rating standpoint and from a political standpoint I think on doing the general obligation versus the revenue bond,” Tata said.
Among the items identified in the factsheet for the buildings and infrastructure bond are facilities for the National Guard, community colleges and other agencies to help create economic development opportunities.
Barry Smith (@Barry_Smith) is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.