A $34.6 million project purported to assist veterans with transportation problems would underwrite call centers that, in most cases, the general public can use and would not pay for any new buses, vans, or other transportation services. Wake County will receive more than $600,000 to let a county transit call center operate 24 hours a day and to improve a website “to allow veterans and others to schedule trips online.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood launched the Veterans Transportation and Community Living Initiative during a Wednesday press conference at the A.A. Thompson Center in downtown Raleigh. The initiative would fund 55 public transit communications systems in 32 states, including North Carolina. Wake County is the only jurisdiction in North Carolina to receive funding as part of the initiative.

The vast majority of the projects nationally are similar to Wake County’s — upgrading existing call centers or websites to help schedule bus or van trips. A handful are targeted to call centers at Veterans Administration hospitals and other veterans’ facilities, but most of the added services would be available to the general public as well. (To download a PDF of the projects, click here.)

“The Obama administration is committed to providing our military veterans and their families with the resources they need and deserve,” LaHood said. He added that no new taxes would be needed to finance the project. A DOT spokesman told Carolina Journal that the funding would come from “an existing pot of money.” LaHood also urged Congress to pass the president’s American Jobs Act.

The DOT spokesman admitted to CJ that the department can cite no study indicating that veterans face a specific problem gaining access to transportation, “but we were told there is one,” he said.

Rep. Grier Martin, D-Wake, an Army veteran and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, said veterans in the area have transportation needs that have not been met by current programs. He did acknowledge that the administration’s initiative would help nonveterans and those with no connection to the military.

Wake County Commissioner Phil Matthews, who closed the program with a short talk, said “this is all about veterans,” but when questioned afterward, he told CJ “this is about more than veterans,” and admitted that anyone with transportation problems could benefit from the program.

Commission Chairman Paul Coble also acknowledged that the grant may serve people other than veterans, and added, “It is wrong for a high-level official [such as LaHood] to use this event to promote Obama’s jobs bill.”

Michael Sanera, director of research and local government studies at the John Locke Foundation and an Army intelligence officer in Berlin during the 1970s, said it was shameful that the Obama administration was using the Veterans Day holiday to promote “a partisan use of taxpayers’ money. All presidents do this, but the fact that LaHood is in North Carolina is no coincidence. He is just the latest in a long list of Obama administration officials and Obama himself visiting North Carolina to pass out goodies in order to bribe North Carolina voters into re-electing him.”

The president has visited North Carolina three times in the past five months, and a host of Cabinet officials have been in the state as well. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was in the Triangle in late October, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has a trip scheduled for Raleigh Thursday.

Obama won North Carolina by a 50-49 margin in 2008 and is expected to have a tough time taking it and the state’s 15 electoral votes next year. U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., told Roll Call Wednesday that the president had “no chance” to win the Tar Heel State next year. “He’s done there,” Burr said.

Rick Henderson is managing editor of Carolina Journal. Executive Editor Don Carrington contributed additional reporting to this story.