News 14 Carolina - Political Connections

More from Gerlach...

Here's a sampling of quotes from his talk at the NC Policy Watch transportation forum.

"The words $64 billion are not allowed in the administration to be spoken by any official of DOT because we're tired of hearing about it. Because what happens when you start talking about such an enormous number which would require us to double the gas tax which we're not proposing it but require you to increase it perhaps to 75 cents a gallon."

"I think what you'll see in the next two weeks is a commission of probably 20-30 people appointed by the governor and General Assembly."

"But what happened I think for probably the first time since 1989, there has never been another time where transportation has never been so high on the agenda."

"But it is to say that the attention has to focus on these major things (referring to interstates) that only the state can deal with and we're going to have to work with local governments to see how that balances out as we did with Medicaid."