Board shares list of wants

Breadmen’s was the caterer, but members of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen gave the area’s legislative representatives several things to chew on Monday at a legislative breakfast among the officials.

Municipalities meet annually with their representatives in the N.C. General Assembly to discuss legislative requests that they hope to see implemented, or at least discussed, during that year’s session.

The aldermen presented requests that legislators called feasible — increasing the town’s motor vehicle tax by $10 and requesting that the state ensure adequate health care funding — and some that were labeled as more idealistic — allowing citizens who are not naturalized to vote in local elections.

“I know it’s radical for the North Carolina legislature, but we should allow people of voting age in the process,” Alderman John Herrera said of the request to give more voting rights to permanent residents of legal age, even if they are not naturalized citizens.

“There is a difference between what the paper states and what reality dictates,” he said of the current citizenship laws.

Herrera, who had to wait 10 years for his citizenship after marrying a U.S. citizen in 1988, lodged the same request last year.

N.C. Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Orange, said it would take about 10 years to convert the idea into a state constitutional amendment.

The town also is requesting that its legislators help to ensure immigrants’ rights by opposing a proposal before the assembly that would toughen driver’s license requirements for noncitizens.

A proposed law from N.C. Sen. Clark Jenkins, D-Edgecombe, would limit state driver’s licenses to only those who qualify either as “a citizen of the United States or … demonstrate unexpired legal authorization to be in the United States.”

Although admitting that any local initiative on the law might be supplanted by federal or state action, the aldermen present Monday said Jenkins’ law would be dangerous.

“It would invite people to live outside the law,” said Mayor Mike Nelson.

Both sides seemed more optimistic about the chances for immediate action on some of the town’s other requests.

Raising the town’s motor vehicle tax by $10 would result in an additional $125,000 annually for public transit services, Carrboro officials told the legislators.

And although the state caps the rate at $15, both Charlotte and the town of Matthews have succeeded in increasing that number.

“With shrinkages in funding at the federal and state levels, we need revenue from other sources,” Nelson said.

Nelson said he has a meeting Friday with Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy and Moses Carey Jr., Orange County Board of Commissioners chairman, to discuss countywide support of the proposal.

N.C. Rep. Verla Insko, D-Orange, asked that the town draft a resolution on the tax and forward it to her office — which Nelson said that he would do next week.

Insko also asked that the town draft a resolution in support of her initiative to establish health care as a state constitutional right.

The aldermen had requested support in providing low and moderate health care and said they would support Insko’s proposal.

Carrboro officials also requested that its legislators oppose a proposed state constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages and eliminate Carrboro’s domestic partner benefits system.

Kinnaird expressed skepticism about the amendment’s chance at passing through the assembly, calling it a bad law.

Chapel Hill will have its legislative breakfast March 4.

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.