Maybe there's an alternative to the trees vs. billboards argument environmentalists and sign owners  have every year.

And maybe a group meeting under the auspices of the state Department of Transportation will find that Third Way, Lynn Bonner reports.

Over the past few years, environmental groups have successfully fought billboard owners' attempts to cut more trees around their signs so that people passing by have longer to read them.

They were tough fights that pitted billboard-loving senators against environmental groups, the DOT and the Department of Enviornment and Natural Resources.

Last week, group representing billboard owners, environmental groups, local governments, petroleum marketers, restaurants and hotels began meeting to try to fashion compromises on tree rules, zoning issues and other billboard matters.

The group is using a facilitator and plans to meet twice a month to come up with new rules, said Ted Sherrod, a DOT roadside environmental engineer.

"I guess using the expertise from a facilitator will hopefully allow us to end up with a third alternative that’s better than what we've ended up with before," he said.

Senate leader Marc Basnight's recommendation to lead the transportation department has Chris Fitzsimon thinking of ideas for other cabinet posts.

How about Randy Parton to lead Cultural Resources?

The satirical nomination from Fitzsimon, executive director of N.C. Policy Watch, comes after Basnight said he supports Lanny Wilson for Secretary of Transportation. Basnight suggested the pick to Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue.

"Wilson may be a nice guy, but he is the epitome of a DOT political insider, the folks who have run the department for years and damaged its credibility with the public," Fitzsimon writes on the Fitzsimon File. "Wilson is exactly the kind of guy Perdue promised not to appoint if she was serious about her plans for DOT reform."

Wilson is an attorney and developer who gave $38,800 to Democratic candidates this election cycle, including $4,000 to Perdue. He also gave $21,000 to the State Democratic Party. He is used to donating.

Wilson gave more than $175,000 to Democratic politicians from 1999-2006 and raised untold thousands more. Governor Mike Easley appointed Wilson to the N.C. Real Estate Commission. Senate President Pro Tem Basnight appointed him to the N.C. Turnpike Authority.

Wilson also has a home on exclusive Figure Eight Island and hosted a dinner there for members of the 21^st Century Transportation Committee earlier this year. A group of homeowners at Figure Eight have formed a political action committee and hired lobbyists to overturn the state law that prohibits seawalls off the shore. The beach is eroding in front of some of the palatial estates on the islands. Seawalls are banned in front of beach property because they increase the erosion down the coastline.

How about it? Any other suggestions (serious or otherwise) for cabinet posts?

Senate leader Marc Basnight said he has told Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue that Transportation Board member Lanny Wilson would be a good pick for transportation secretary.

Wilson would be no stranger to Perdue. He is one of a handful of board members who were also fundraisers for her gubernatorial campaign. Two other transportation board members who raised money for Perdue resigned during the campaign. Thomas Betts pressured a city official to raise money for Perdue and Louis Sewell steered roadwork to commercial properties in Jacksonville that he or his son co-owned.

Perdue pledged to use executive orders to take much of the specific road-building decisions away from transportation board members, who are appointed by the governor.

Basnight said that Wilson's fundraising activities wouldn't raise any problems with him running the transportation department.

"I wish she would appoint him. I asked her to," Basnight told reporters Thursday. "I think Lanny would be outstanding.

"He never wants anything for himself. Never has. He's a fundraiser because he cares. And there's not a governor in this country that I'm aware of who will not appoint people who raise money for them," Basnight said. "I would not shy from it. Now she may well do that. She never did listen to me."

Efforts to reach Wilson Thursday afternoon failed. A message to a Perdue spokesman was not immediately returned.

More reasons for Basnight's support and why he wouldn't change the board after the jump.

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The state's turnpike czar has been floated as a transportation secretary.

David W. Joyner is a longtime transportation expert who has led the ongoing push for toll roads here as the first director of the N.C. Turnpike Authority.

His name has recently been suggested as a possible contender for head of the N.C. Department of Transportation under Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue.

The son of a state highway commissioner of the same name from the 1960s, Joyner was an assistant to the U.S. transportation secretary and later vice president of state government affairs for Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm.

In 1994, he moved to Raleigh and founded State Capitol Strategies, a 50-state legislative bill tracking company later sold to the Washington Post. He later worked for Womble Carlyle.

A native of Rocky Mount, he has known Gov. Mike Easley since kindergarten and roomed with him for three years at UNC-Chapel Hill. He later worked as a major fundraiser for the governor.

Since 2005, Joyner has headed the turnpike effort, a job that has given him a lot of contact with the state DOT yet still positions him as a plausible outsider to the troubled agency.

Environmentalists would have some questions for a potential transportation appointee.

Elizabeth Ouzts, director of Environment North Carolina, said that she would want to hear more from state Sen. Clark Jenkins about his views before he took a job as secretary of the state Department of Transportation.

Jenkins is one of several people whose names have been discussed by Raleigh insiders recently, though Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue has not made any announcements.

Ouzts said that as a member of the state Board of Transportation Jenkins was "very vocal" about his frustration with delays on road projects caused by the need for environmental reviews, but she noted that his record as a state senator has been good.

In 2007, the group gave Jenkins an 85 percent rating on its scorecard of pro-environmental votes.

"We would hope that he would continue on that path and make decisions that were going to be good for the environment and the economy," she said.

Ouzts was not familiar with the environmental records of Gene Conti or Lanny Wilson, whose names have also come up.

N.C. Spin has seconded the Dome's gossip.

As we noted, one of the names potentially being discussed for state secretary of transportation is Sen. Clark Jenkins.

Now the weekly e-newsletter has made the same call:

The Tarboro Senator has served on the DOT board, has headed the Senate committee on Transportation, and has been a vocal critic of the way the department has been run. Jenkins would be a maverick at DOT and would surely shake things up in this department that often appears arrogant and incompetent. He is highly independent; however he does have very close connections with Senate leadership. Maybe the right man at the right time.

We asked the Magic Eight Ball if Jenkins would be appointed. It's response: Yes.

N.C. Transportation officials expect road construction money to continue decreasing over the next two years.

The department's revenue from gas and car sales taxes is down 11 percent, or $317 million, from what was budgeted in July, according to Mark Foster, the department's chief financial officer.

"We're not anticipating a rebound over the next couple of years," Foster told the Joint Legislative Transportation Oversight Committee Thursday.

Foster said the department expects a similar decline in the budget that runs from July 2009 to June 2010. Prices for construction material have skyrocketed, especially on petroleum-based asphalt, while gas and car sales taxes have fallen due to fewer car purchases and less driving. The gas tax also was capped at 29.9 cents two years ago instead of rising with gas prices to pay for similar rises in asphalt prices.

The current dip in gas prices and lower construction bids have helped, Foster said. Both could speed up construction — the good news — but that creates a cashflow problem of having the money to pay for construction that finishes early — the bad news.

"We're not sure where this story ends," Foster said.

Beverly Perdue said Wednesday that she would strip most specific decisions from the state Board of Transportation.

Perdue was speaking to The N&O's editorial board and she outlined eight executive orders she would issue on inauguration day.

Perdue said she would be able to use an executive order to convert the transportation board, which now approves contracts, spending and projects, into a panel focused on long-term planning.

"I want to take the money out of the board. I want to transform the way DOT does business," she said.

She would not promise to ban fundraisers from the board, saying her proposals would make their influence moot. Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, the Republican nominee for governor, has said he would not appoint any of his fundraisers to the board.

Two board members — Louis W. Sewell Jr. and Thomas Betts Jr. — who are also Perdue fundraisers have resigned from the board this year.

"It seems to me the best way you can tell what someone is going to do in the future is to take a look at what they're doing right now and what they've done in the past," said Jack Hawke, a strategist for McCrory's campaign. "The lieutenant governor has used the Board of Transportation as her finance committee."

More, including Perdue's other proposals, after the jump.

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Libertarian candidate for governor Mike Munger has a decongestant prescription for North Carolina's roads.

Stop shifting $170 million a year from the Highway Trust Fund, which helps pay for roads, to the rest of the state budget, Munger says.

"We don't need more taxes," he wrote in an email.

Both Democrat Beverly Perdue and Republican Pat McCrory agree, and the General Assembly actually started phasing out that annual raid on the road money this year.

Second, Munger says the state Department of Transportation has become a "retirement home for political go-fers and yes men." He wants hiring based on public service and expertise.

Lastly, Munger proposes a special road building commission that would generate an overall list of projects that the legislature could vote for or against but couldn't change - a variant on the federal commission for closing military bases. That way individual legislators couldn't secure pork for their district at the expense of statewide needs.

"Let's ... catch up on maintenance of those bridges and repairs on those roads, even in districts without powerful legislators," Munger said. "Those other folks pay taxes, too."