#NCGA: Skip Stam endorses toll roads

stamState House speaker Pro Tem Skip Stam has posted an endorsement of toll roads on his official site — which still IDs him as the “North Carolina House Republican Leader”.  The endorsement language on his site matches the talking points we got in a group email, originating from his law firm account, that we got our hands on a few weeks back.

Stam joins speaker Thom Tillis in supporting a concept that is unequivocally denounced in the most recent version of the North Carolina Republican Party platform. Though, we have received word that a Raleigh-led effort to strip the anti-toll language from the party platform is underway.  payup

Apparently, Republican House leaders have abandoned the concept of trimming the bureaucracy and putting money back into people’s pockets.  The ‘conservative revolution’ — with its toll roads and excise taxes — appears intent on giving us a lot more Black-Basnight business-as-usual.

Public-private partnerships on toll roads like those advocated by Stam, Tillis & co. rarely pay for themselves.  The taxpayers almost always end up having to bail these messes out — often at a much higher price than what it would have cost for the state to have built or expanded the road outright.