Hour 3 - Hour 3 covered closed primaries, race-based redistricting rulings, Scott Bessent’s tax refund advice, and updates on the I-85 deputy shooting.

What this episode covers

00:00 Welcome back to the program. Let's go to the WRD talk line. We'll talk to Tom in Pickens. How you doing, Tom? I'm good. How are you? I'm great. What's up, Hey, so two things real quickly. When you're talking about closed primaries and the Save America Act, I wish you were going to be wrong. know, another way to put those is that those are term limits. That's why they battle us so much. 00:29 on on closing the primaries or or the save America act so many of these people. You know, so right. It limits how long they're going to be there that's why they don't want it. That's exactly that's really that's exactly right really and the other the other the other thing I want to bring up is just talking about our neighbors, Tennessee and Florida. We have no state income tax. 00:56 yet they don't have a fraction of the road maintenance problems we have. you gotta, I think we just, we don't have a taxing problem here. We have a spending problem in North Carolina. And the other question that you gotta ask is back in 2017, they passed a 12 cent gas tax increase that was supposed to go into a trust fund to of course fix the road. Whatever happened to that trust 01:26 Well, that went ahead. But you know what? Immediately after that was done, immediately after that happened, uh you had certain legislators, especially over in the Senate talking about, a minute, this is to fix the roads. Why can't we just use it to build new roads? Well, that's not the way it was presented to us about building new roads. We were talking about fixing the roads. So they automatically started spending that money in ways they shouldn't, Tom. I appreciate it. now we've got that ridiculous 01:57 DOT reform bill, the DOT modernization bill. So remember those roads that Tom just talked about? The state roads? Now that's another thing they didn't tell you. When they were passing the state tax or the gas tax, that was only to be for state roads, not county roads, state roads. Now where that money is gone, I have no idea. 02:28 But this new bill would actually shift roads that were supposed to be fixed by the state. The state hasn't fixed them yet, so they're going to give them back to the counties. Oh, so now it's the county's problem, right? And the state can transfer ownership of hundreds of miles of what they call non-essential state roads to counties and cities. Now, they're labeling that as voluntary. 02:57 but the counties are getting financial incentives to accept the roads, including a second 1 % local sales tax totaling 2 % for transportation, exemption from property tax millage caps for road maintenance, which are capped right now, but won't be, a second 1 % local sales tax for 2 % for transportation. Let me see, relief from the rule requiring 25 % of local roads 03:24 to be spent on local road funds to be spent on state roads. And then you've got, listen to this, you've got the choice lanes. Now they're not calling them toll roads, they're calling them choice lanes that can be added to highways like 26, 526. And that would be funded through a public-private partnership. Now here's the thing. The state can issue toll road bonds and that doesn't count towards our debt limit. Ah. 03:53 And listen to this, you would think that the tolls that they collected on those roads would actually go for fixing roads. No, no, no, no, you would be wrong. They can be diverted into other projects, not just the roads. And you know, the state's $51 billion pension fund, that can be used to finance projects as well. How about that? Oh, and by the way, before all of these toll projects happen, 04:22 You do not have to have. 04:26 any sort of a public hearing. They can just do it. Let's go to Rob in Westminster, talk about the roads real quick. If I can push that button. There you go, Rob. How you doing, Hey, how you doing, Good. I just want to talk about the roads. I just moved up from St. Augustine, Florida, and I moved here to Westminster, but a house. ...

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