Revised NC highway litter bill drops higher fines but adds money for inmate cleanups
A bill that had proposed to double the fines for littering in North Carolina has been revised to instead bolster government efforts to clean up the state’s highways, including helping to pay sheriffs to put jail inmates to work.
A new version of House Bill 100, The Highway Cleanup Act of 2021, would leave littering fines as they are and calls on a legislative committee to study whether the penalties work.
But the bill, approved by the House Transportation Committee on Tuesday, includes several other provisions meant to help keep the state’s roads from becoming trashy. They include:
▪ Require the state Department of Transportation and its contractors to pick up trash before mowing along roadways. State law currently requires NCDOT to clean up before mowing only “to the extent practicable.” The bill would strike that phrase.
▪ Require NCDOT to remove dead animals “obstructing roadways and resulting in a safety hazard” within two business days of learning about them.
▪ Provide $1 million to establish the “Detainees Clean NC” program that would award grants to county sheriff’s departments to pay deputies overtime to supervise litter cleanup by jail inmates. The earlier version of the bill included half that amount and did not say the money would be used to supervise inmate litter crews.
▪ Direct NCDOT and the state Department of Public Safety to study the possibility of reintroducing state prison inmate litter crews. NCDOT moved away from relying on prison labor, in part because the cost of supervision and the need to keep prisoners close together made the cleanups not cost-effective.
▪ Direct NCDOT to use $250,000 from its Highway Fund for marketing and advertising through existing anti-litter programs such as Adopt-A-Highway, Litter Sweep and Swat-A-Litter Bug. The previous version of the bill called for spending $500,000.
▪ Direct the State Board of Education to integrate litter prevention into science and other courses “as appropriate,” and require the state Department of Public Instruction to provide curriculum content, including a video for students in grades six through eight.
Rep. John Bell IV, a Republican from Wayne County and the House majority Leader, says he introduced the bill because he got tired of seeing trash along highways, and so had many of his constituents. The bill has 66 co-sponsors from both parties, indicating support from a majority of House members.
“Everybody sees it,” Bell said Tuesday. “Everybody has an issue with it.”
Bell said he and the bill’s primary sponsors abandoned their earlier proposal to double the fines for littering when they realized they didn’t know enough about enforcement of the state’s litter laws.
According to state court records, law enforcement agencies of all kinds issued 1,689 citations for littering in 2020, down about 18% from the year before and 29% since 2016. In those five years, nearly two-thirds of settled littering cases were dismissed.
“Before we increase fines and penalties, we want to see how they’re enforced,” Bell said.
The bill was introduced in February, when the lack of foliage revealed seemingly unending trails of trash and debris lining the state’s highways. The coronavirus pandemic had forced cancellation of volunteer cleanup efforts last year, at the same time financial problems at NCDOT caused the department to cut back on roadside maintenance, including litter pickup.
With its finances much improved in recent months, NCDOT has stepped up cleanup efforts, backed up with an outpouring of social media messages and new public service announcements, including a couple featuring country music star and North Carolina native Luke Combs. The publicity helped bring out volunteers for community cleanups across the state.
“Because of these efforts, and because of the focus put on cleaning up our state, many groups across our state — church groups, civic groups, community leaders, individuals — have all teamed up and started cleaning up their communities as well,” Bell told the Transportation Committee members Tuesday.
NCDOT says its employees, contractors and volunteers have collected more than 4 million pounds of litter from along highways since Jan. 1.
The Transportation Committee approved the bill without discussion or dissent on Tuesday and sent it on to the Appropriations Committee.
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 5:50 AM with the headline "Revised NC highway litter bill drops higher fines but adds money for inmate cleanups."
