Critiquing GoTriangle doesn’t make sense in our more popular threads on suburban sprawl, in general or on GoRaleigh specifically when it’s not specifically about RUSbus, so let’s revive this one.
Y’know how we mentioned a while back that GoTriangle sometimes hasn’t focused enough on Wake County? CAMPO, the middle man between city halls and NC/USDOT for transportation policy things in the eastern Triangle, will show up at this afternoon’s GoTriangle Audit and Finance Committee meeting to share how it’s changing which government agencies decide certain parts of how our transit sales tax gets spent.
This is in response to how GoTriangle has done a bad job of keeping track of its own responsibilities. This draft Lead Agency Matrix, among other things, will require GoTriangle to:
Make a new, separate 'Tax District Administration' arm so that they don't try to take any more money that isn't 'theirs'
Due to how the Triangle’s transit taxes were written into state law, GoTriangle is both a transit agency that runs buses and paratransit, as well as a tax agency that controls how taxes are spent. You’d expect GoTriangle to have kept its responsibilities clear-cut, but as @Kevin pointed out before:
This past year, they hired the business accounting/consulting firm Deloitte to figure out why that was happening, as well as what they need to do better. And they came back with some infuriating discoveries that are hilarious to read in a schadenfreude-y way.
The estimated transit-specific vehicle rental taxes across Wake, Durham, and Orange counties for FY2024 was around $404,000. Multiply this by two years and give yourself some wiggle room, and we can assume that somewhere around $800k could have been sitting around, being unused for far longer than it should’ve been (though I couldn’t find the exact amount of money that was actually mismanaged).
I respect that Kevin doesn’t want to name-drop and whatnot, but… well, you can see the government sources I pulled all of this from. Also, the internet doesn’t lie about how there’s a name listed on the GoTriangle website for the implicated role in April 2024 that’s no longer there that August. 
Deloitte’s conclusions seem to be taken well by GoTriangle, seeing that they’re now negotiating contract extensions to do additional work to build onto their recommendations. So I guess that’s a step in the right direction for fixing financial mismanagement? (GoTriangle got lucky that this is so in the weeds that no journalists have really zeroed in on this - though it’s kinda concerning from a civic justice perspective…)
and;
Give up their role of developing multi-year plan for how buses are expanded in Wake County to CAMPO for future years
To clarify, this particular change was made at GoTriangle’s request - presumably since they’re getting stretched really thin, geographically, in trying to do this. This change is in response to how:
This change should let Wake County-based public servants have more control over how and when new bus services are introduced (without those ideas having to fight proposals for Durham and Orange counties while they’re still half-baked). I don’t know how well CAMPO is equipped to taking on this role, but I’d assume that any attempts at getting non-core responsibilities out of GoTriangle’s hands as they go through a corporate culture detox is a good thing?
For better or for worse, we have the same situation in Durham County, too. This work program shows tax district administration-specific roles for the Triangle West TPO (the new name for the DCHC MPO, Durham/Orange counties’ counterpart to CAMPO), too, but I couldn’t immediately find any signs of a similar inter-government treaty that also acknowledges how GoTriangle needs to reorganize itself.
I’m curious but skeptical about whether these changes will do a lot of good - especially if you look at the recent changes around the last issue @Kevin pointed out:
We’re not at a good start, here, since we hired the former CEO of Hampton Roads Transit to replace Chuck Lattuca.