A New Board For A New Penny
When Mecklenburg County voters approved a one percent transportation sales tax on November 4, they did not just raise the local rate to 8.25 percent. They also activated a new regional power center: the Metropolitan Public Transportation Authority, or MPTA, a 27-member board that will govern how nearly nineteen to twenty billion dollars in transit and transportation spending are planned and delivered over the next three decades.
The authority exists because of House Bill 948, better known as the Projects for Advancing Vehicle-Infrastructure Enhancements Act, or PAVE Act, which the General Assembly and Governor approved on July 1, 2025. The law authorizes Mecklenburg County to levy the one percent tax subject to voter approval and requires creation of a countywide transit authority to manage the proceeds.
Those voters have now said yes. The new tax will fund a long list of projects: bus service expansion, road and pedestrian improvements, and future rail corridors that have lived for years on color-coded maps and campaign mailers but not on actual ground.
That puts enormous leverage into the hands of a board that did not exist three weeks ago and is only now being assembled in public meetings, committee rooms and town halls across Mecklenburg County.
How The 27 Seats Are Divided
Under the PAVE Act and an interlocal memorandum of understanding, the MPTA board is structured to reflect both Charlotte’s outsized role and the region’s geography. The 27 seats are allocated as follows:
- 12 seats appointed by the City of Charlotte
- 6 seats appointed by Mecklenburg County
- 1 seat each for the towns of Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Matthews, Mint Hill and Pineville (7 total)
- 1 seat appointed by the Governor of North Carolina
- 1 seat appointed by the President Pro Tem of the State Senate
- 1 seat appointed by the Speaker of the State House
The law does not allow elected officials or lobbyists to serve. It does require that Charlotte’s appointees collectively cover specific areas of expertise, including law, finance, engineering, architecture, logistics and public transportation. At least three of Charlotte’s twelve picks must come from entities that represent business interests in the county, and at least one must have small-business ownership or operating experience. Another must be an active transit rider.
Taken together, the structure guarantees a constant tug-of-war: Charlotte holds a clear plurality, but the county, six towns and three state-level seats can form coalitions that either reinforce or resist city priorities on rail routes, bus investments, road spending and station-area development.
Charlotte’s First Nine Picks
Charlotte is responsible for the largest block of appointments, and City Council has moved first. After a week of interviews with 27 finalists and roughly 17 hours of questioning, council on November 17 confirmed four of its “council-selected” seats to the MPTA:
- Frank Emory – attorney, appointed in the law category
- David Howard – former City Council member, appointed in the public transportation category
- Todd Collins – CEO of Red Hill Ventures, appointed in the economic development / architecture cluster
- Jocelyn Jones Nolley – project manager and chair of the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, appointed in logistics and counted as the required transit rider representative
All four cleared the six-nomination threshold that council set for confirmation. As the selection committee chair James “Smuggie” Mitchell told colleagues, the process involved score sheets, rounds of interviews and multiple ballot checks, a level of care that even council members admitted felt unusually rigorous.
Beyond those four, Charlotte’s appointments are divided into sub-buckets. The Charlotte Regional Business Alliance recommended two candidates. The Foundation For The Carolinas recommended one. Mayor Vi Lyles recommended two. The remaining seats are filled directly by the council. Those recommendations include business figures such as Wyatt Dixion and Lucia Zapata-Griffin for the Alliance slots and Peter Pappas for the Foundation slot, with Charles Bowman and Christy Long recommended for the mayoral positions.
As of this week, council has approved nine of its eventual twelve appointments, including the four council-selected members and several of the recommended business and mayoral picks, according to public meeting summaries and broadcast reports, with a final vote on the last three set for the November 24 business meeting.
Two categories are still legally in play. Because Jones Nolley satisfies the transit rider requirement, the remaining Charlotte seats must ensure the presence of at least one small-business owner as defined in state law.
What The County And Towns Control
Mecklenburg County’s six seats may be less visible in city debates, but they will matter just as much when budgets and project lists reach the board. County commissioners are conducting their own interview process this month, following a similar pattern of applications and shortlists.
The smaller towns, meanwhile, are moving at their own pace. Cornelius commissioners have already named Bob Menzel as their representative. Huntersville is expected to seat T. Anthony Lindsey, according to local officials. Davidson has signaled it will appoint a member familiar with both university commuting patterns and I-77 toll-lane politics.
Each town seat is only one vote, but those seven votes, if aligned with the county delegation and one or both of the legislative appointees, can shape priorities on suburban park-and-ride lots, rail extensions to the north and south, and the balance between new lanes for cars and new service for buses.
The Money, The Mandate, And The Watchdogs
The stakes are blunt. The tax is expected to raise roughly nineteen to twenty billion dollars over thirty years, depending on growth and inflation. Public materials describe a package that includes new bus routes and frequencies, road projects, sidewalks and greenways, and two major rail lines that have been discussed for more than a decade: the Red Line to the north and the Silver Line cross-county alignment.
The MPTA board will not build individual projects itself. Instead, it will approve plans, set investment priorities, negotiate interlocal agreements with towns and the county, and oversee how revenue flows to CATS and other implementing agencies. It will also be the body that auditors, advocates and frustrated riders turn to when projects stall or costs spike.
Supporters like the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance and groups such as Sustain Charlotte have framed the authority as a necessary upgrade from the current patchwork of boards and committees that oversee transit and transportation. They argue that a single regional board with clear taxing authority is the only way to deliver expensive rail lines and countywide bus improvements in a reasonable time frame.
Opponents, including organizations such as Action NC, have warned that the tax is regressive and that concentrating revenue in a new authority risks favoring big projects and big interests over basic service and affordability.
The MPTA will sit squarely in the middle of that fight.
The Emerging Power Blocs
Even before all twenty-seven seats are filled, the outline of potential voting blocs is visible.
- Business and investment bloc: The Charlotte Regional Business Alliance and Foundation For The Carolinas recommendations, along with several Charlotte appointees whose careers are in finance, development or real estate, are likely to push for predictable project delivery, firm timelines and partnership-heavy approaches to station-area development.
- Community and equity bloc: Members with backgrounds in neighborhood organizing, housing, civil rights and frontline transit use – including appointees like Jones Nolley and county or town representatives who ride buses and light rail daily – can be expected to focus on fare policy, frequency, safety and anti-displacement measures around future stations.
- Town and operations bloc: The seven town appointees, plus some county members, are already signaling interest in reliability of existing bus routes, park-and-ride access, interstate congestion, and how quickly promised rail extensions reach their residents instead of stopping at city limits.
None of those blocs is guaranteed to move in lockstep. Each seat-holder will have to live with the practical consequences of every budget vote, whether that is a delayed road widening in Mint Hill or a bus network redesign on West Boulevard. But those alignments will matter once the authority starts ranking projects and dividing the first waves of tax revenue.
What Happens Next
Deadlines are baked into state law. The MPTA’s full 27-member board must be seated before January 1, 2026. The Charlotte City Council expects to fill its remaining three seats on November 24. County commissioners and the remaining towns are on similar late-November and December timelines.
Once seated, the authority will inherit a to-do list that is several years old: update long-range plans, approve initial revenue allocations, formalize how much of the new tax goes to roads versus rail versus bus, and negotiate the relationship between the MPTA and CATS governance.
For voters, the board’s work will be the real test of the referendum that dominated local politics for much of 2025. Yard signs and “Yes for Meck” pins are one kind of accountability. A 27-member board with power over routes, timelines and contracts is another.
The penny has been approved. The question now is how this new authority spends it, and for whom.
About the Author
Jack Beckett is senior writer for The Charlotte Mercury and fuels most of his civic outrage with coffee that has been reheated at least twice. If you see someone at a public meeting balancing a notebook, a transit map and a lukewarm cup at the same time, there is a solid chance it is him.
You can find more slow-burn civic reporting at The Charlotte Mercury, dive into the latest city coverage at our News section, and follow the paper trail over at Charlotte Politics. For the 2025 cycle we are putting every candidate, referendum and fine-print clause under a bright, unflattering light in our special election package, “Poll Dance 2025” – because if we have to read these campaign finance reports, you might as well get some use out of them too.
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© 2025 The Charlotte Mercury / Strolling Ballantyne
This article, “Who Will Run Charlotte’s New Transit Authority? Inside the 27-Seat MPTA Board,” by Jack Beckett is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0.
“Who Will Run Charlotte’s New Transit Authority? Inside the 27-Seat MPTA Board”
by Jack Beckett, The Charlotte Mercury (CC BY-ND 4.0)