Catch-22: Triangle Democrats upset over light-rail funding hit

It also drives a nail into the project, which has already cost local taxpayers $88 million and may never see the $1.2 billion in federal funding it depends on, Democrats complained during one of the few open forums planned before the budget passes this week.

Rep. Grier Martin, D-Wake, said the budget section withholding the state's planned funding for the project is clever enough to doom the plan without being explicit. Martin said that, back when he was a committee chairman, this was "the type of wording I would have used if I wanted to kill a project."

"That was not the intent," state Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, a key Republican budget writer, replied during a joint meeting of the House and Senate appropriations committees.

Democratic lawmakers from Orange and Durham counties said the Republican majority has now attached a Catch-22 to the project: No state funding without federal funding when there's no federal funding without the state support.

Republican leaders referred questions on the true impact of the move to legislative staff who helped craft the budget. Staff attorney Luke Gillenwater said during the meeting that there is "some ambiguity."

"I don't believe that's a certainty," Gillenwater said when asked whether the budget would kill the project. "Again, there's ambiguity."

"Wouldn't it be better to leave it out until that ambiguity is gone?" asked Rep. Mickey Michaux, D-Durham.

GOP budget writers said they don't want to tie up more than $200 million for a project that may not come off. State Sen. Harry Brown, R-Onslow, another key budget negotiator, said the state can't afford to leave that money "sitting on the sidelines."

If the federal funding comes through, "we'll take a hard look at it and try to find some dollars," said Brown.

House Transportation Committee Co-Chairman John Torbett, R-Gaston, acknowledged that federal transportation planners tend to be a bird-in-hand group when it comes to funding matches, but he also said federal infrastructure funding plans are up in the air and that, "nobody knows about funding for anything" right now.

This project is slated to run about 18 miles from Chapel Hill to Durham, connecting UNC Hospitals to North Carolina Central University and points in between, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. Durham and Orange counties have already spent some $88 million planning the line and funding the environmental studies needed to get this far in the federal application process.