Our goofy guv and his broke DOT brought the circus to town
The NCDOT is a financial mess. It’s gone to the General Assembly for bailouts. In October, a McKinsey report revealed that the state Department of Transportation had spent nearly six times what it was budgeted for in 2019. Treasurer Dale Folwell openly called for the dismissal of DOT secretary Jim Trogdon for his role in overseeing this mess.
Road projects were threatened. Employees and contractors were threatened with layoffs.
Meanwhile, it has been learned that — while all of that was going down — the Cooper administration spent nearly $400K to buy most of the Ringling Bros. circus train. (AND they parked in in Roy Cooper’s home county.) :
Part of a train once owned by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is sitting on an abandoned rail line in the Nash County woods.
The N.C. Department of Transportation bought the circus train about three years ago, and before Carolina Journal got a tip about the train’s location, few people seemed to know it existed.
Markings on the train cars — deep into the woods and not easily visible from any road — indicate it’s part of “The Greatest Show on Earth.” There’s no locomotive.
The cars, nine in all, sit on tracks about 4,000 feet from the town limits of Spring Hope. Ringling Bros. closed in 2017.
NCDOT spokeswoman Katie Trout told CJ as part of a strategic transportation initiative in 2017, NCDOT bought the nine rail cars for $383,000. The cars rest on state-owned track due to limited space at the active rail facilities in Raleigh.
After buying the circus train, NCDOT applied for and was awarded a $77 million federal grant to purchase new rail cars.
“At this time, NCDOT is evaluating its rail fleet and will make recommendations on the department’s rail fleet future needs, including the disposition of nine rail cars purchased in 2017. The assessment should be complete by the end of this calendar year,” Trout told CJ.
Spring Hope Mayor Buddy Gwaltney said the train has become the talk of the town, though he isn’t sure why it’s there. He first heard about the lonesome train last week.
“We haven’t seen any elephants or giraffes running around … monkeys swinging in the trees yet, but we’ve got our eyes open,” he joked. […]
Finding out the Cooper administration was doing stuff like this — while spending SIX TIMES what they were budgeted — is disgusting. The very least we ought to expect from these people in Raleigh is to respect OUR money like they respect their own.
This is, indeed, disgusting and irresponsible. No wonder NCDOT doesn’t have the money to move scheduled projects on time, when they waste money like this, on top of giving some of their people 100% raises, I am told. I got together with Rep. Speciale this past year, and requested an audit of NCDOT from our State Auditor, Beth Wood. Rather than spend over a million dollars on an audit, she reviewed the McKinsey report and found some things that didn’t look right to her. She spoke to Speaker Moore and Transportation Chairman John Torbett, and we passed a bill giving NCDOT some financial help to keep them running and requiring an audit to be done. We’ll see how it goes from there.