RALEIGH — It looks like a House budget subcommittee has come up with a good idea that will save General Fund money and align government costs more directly with government benefits.
This good idea probably won’t survive the week.
Rep. Mitch Gillespie, a Republican from McDowell County, is co-chair of the subcommittee. His panel produced its recommendations for a portion of the 2003-05 budget that would, among other things, introduce tolls on all of North Carolina’s ferries.
Three of the seven ferry lines already charge fees to users ranging from $5 to $15 per trip. Gillespie and his colleagues are proposing tolls that would help offset the $20 million taxpayers currently chip in to cover the system’s costs. The savings would fund highway maintenance projects statewide.
“We just feel like it’s not right for the people of North Carolina to subsidize the 78 percent of out-of-state tourists who use [the ferries] while the roads are being neglected,” Gillespie told the Associated Press.
There will be some obvious objections from lawmakers and others on the coast. One is that while out-of-staters may dominate the ferry-using population, many locals ride the boats too, especially to Ocracoke, which has no bridge connecting it to the mainland. But on the three toll lines, local residents can buy $100 annual passes that would reduce the daily cost to about a quarter. Furthermore, why shouldn’t those who benefit most from the ferries pay more than those who benefit little or not at all? Highway users pay for their travel roughly in proportion to the wear-and-tear they put on the roads (via gas taxes).
Another objection might be that tolls would deter travel to the region and depress its crucial tourism industry. I’m sorry, but markets generate prices for a reason. There is no way to know whether an enterprise or an industry is producing net benefits other than for buyers of goods or services to pay sellers of the same. Surely North Carolina’s coastal attractions are worth visiting even if tourists must pay their own way across the water.
Finally, some may complain that Eastern North Carolina is being “picked on” here, given that few tourists take ferries to visit Biltmore House or Grandfather Mountain. Actually, regional bias is precisely the problem here, which is why Piedmont and western lawmakers will likely greet the idea with relish. My recent experience talking with local officials, journalists, business leaders, and average citizens west of Raleigh is that they have had their fill of the argument that their tax money should continue to flow eastward to build “One North Carolina.”
They’d rather build some roads — where the traffic is horrid and the potholes are legion. They’re right. But I fear they will be disappointed.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.