North Carolina should begin collecting $92 million within a year to reduce the toxic diesel emissions by upgrading its government owned vehicle fleets in the state.

The money is North Carolina’s share of Volkswagen’s debt in fines and settlements after the auto-mobile company was caught selling hundreds of thousands of turbocharged VW and Audi vehicles programmed to cheat on United States emission tests.

In state’s recently passed budget bill, the Senate leaders signaled how they want they money to be spent. Prioritize purchases that boost job growth, budget language instructs.

Favor in-state manufacturers and small businesses when buying. And the language explicitly reinforces the fact that the General Assembly controls state purse strings, even for funding from court settlement awards.

In contrast, cleaner-energy advocates are urging Roy Cooper’s administration to keep all options open as they are planing to spending of the state’s share of the Volkswagen Mitigation Trust.

But, some are explicitly unhappy with the early guidance from Jones Street.

“Neither the House nor Senate have been briefed yet on the settlement funds, and the trust is not yet set up, so this is a preemptive strike by the Senate to grab to control away from the governor before the trust is even set up,” said Molly Diggins, director of the state chapter of the Sierra Club.

To compensate for pollution from the Volkswagen scheme, mitigation trust money is explicitly intended to help states reduce levels of one diesel’s most dangerous class of emissions: oxides of nitrogen (NOx), which are prime critical ingredients for ozone gas.

Cooper’s press secretary, Noelle Talley said: As part of his new administration’s to-do list, Governor Roy Cooper must appoint a state trustee and a lead agency to develop a spending plan that executors of The Volkswagen Mitigation Trust must approve.

AMandeep