Bonding authority: finance pro takes a shot at promoting the governor's goals.

• Position: Q&A - Interview

Lee Roberts, 46, left Wall Street for North Carolina in 2006 and later worked on multimillion dollar deals with private-equity investors Tom Darden and Adam Abram. After replacing Art Pope as state budget director last September, he's overseeing annual spending of $50 billion. Disputes between his boss--Gov. Pat McCrory--and GOP lawmakers has made it a trial by fire for the Duke University graduate. He talked with Business North Carolina in Southern Pines. Comments are edited for brevity.

Why favor the governor's bond plan?

The governor proposed a $2.85 billion bond package that covers highways, infrastructure across the state, UNC [system], community colleges, medical examiner facilities, National Guard, parks, historic sites. That's well within our existing debt affordability. There are only 10 states that have AAA credit ratings from all three ratings agencies, and no one wants to do anything that comes anywhere near jeopardizing that credit rating. It's been 15 years since our last general obligation bond issue. We've added 2 million people since that time. The governor believes it's a key priority. Everywhere you look, you see significant infrastructure needs around the state. And we've been pushing to get it on the ballot this fall, simply for the interest rate cost rationale. Every quarter-point increase in interest rates costs us $7.5 million a year.

What is the governor's position on distributing sales tax from wealthier urban counties to rural ones?

The governor is firmly against the sales-tax redistribution. He issued a veto threat with respect to the entire budget on the basis of sales-tax redistribution. That's the only policy item on which we've drawn that kind of line in the sand. First, it's a tax increase. The proposal that the Senate has out there [as of mid-August] on sales-tax redistribution assumes that most counties will raise taxes. About 8.5 million North Carolinians would pay higher sales taxes. The governor believes middle-class families are already taxed enough. Second, it's redistribution, which does not have a strong track record anywhere it's been tried.

Third, you're substituting Raleigh judgment for local control. We spend a lot of time in Raleigh talking about how Washington doesn't know what they're talking about. They've got one-size-fits-all solutions. We're better placed to know what's best for North Carolina. Yet there are folks in the General Assembly who think we're better off...