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Sunday, January 11, 2009
Georgia’s transportation crisis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After years of denial, much of Georgia’s leadership now acknowledges that the state’s transportation system is in crisis and that the situation in metro Atlanta is particularly dire.
It’s not just that we’ve failed to modernize infrastructure; we have also failed to modernize our transportation thinking, our bureaucracies and our sources of transportation revenue, and are now reaping the consequences of those failures.
However, the broad acknowledgement that real change is needed has come at an awkward time. Fixing Georgia’s transportation system and bureaucracies will require vision, courage, money and time, but most of all money, and we don’t have any. With revenue projections plummeting in a harsh economic climate, state legislators gathering for the 2009 session face the prospect of cutting $2 billion from the budget, which inevitably means painful cutbacks in areas such as education and health care. Nor is there likely to be much enthusiasm for raising taxes.
Nonetheless, the state Department of Transportation is asking legislators for more than $400 million in new money from a general fund that’s already overspent. MARTA, the only major rail-transit system in the country that survives without state support, is asking for more than $100 million.
In both cases, the requests are stop-gap measures designed to ease the funding crisis in the short term. Legislators are also being heavily lobbied by business groups and transportation agencies to create a more long-term mechanism that will significantly increase transportation funding.
Last year, legislators came close to approving a mechanism that would have allowed metro Atlanta to tax itself to help meet its transportation needs. The proposal failed at the last minute in the state Senate, which is led by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, and that failure became a serious political problem for Cagle. With his bid for governor on the line, Cagle is now an enthusiastic supporter of transportation reform and funding.
The situation is so critical that it has even aroused the current governor, Sonny Perdue, who may finally be ready to take a leadership role in transportation policy. A study by McKinsey & Co., undertaken at Perdue’s request, has documented in stark numbers just how little Georgia has been spending on transportation and how much economic growth it could generate with a more aggressive approach. Perdue himself has not responded to those findings, but he will probably do so in the next few days.
It’s hard to know what to expect. Even in more prosperous times, the governor wasn’t exactly a visionary. His biggest initiative to date has been his “Go Fish Georgia” program. The current economic climate gives him the perfect excuse to once again “go small,” even at a time when much bigger steps are required.
However, the roots of our transportation problems go deeper than mere money. For example, Georgia’s 13-member transportation board —- one member for each of the state’s congressional districts —- is archaic. It was designed as a means to distribute patronage around the state, and that’s exactly what it does. Traditionally, board members have seen their first responsibility as diverting as many transportation dollars as possible back to the home district; setting policy to create an efficient statewide transportation system was a distant second. That approach has even been written into law with a “congressional balancing” requirement that money be spent equally among the districts, without regard to where it’s most needed or would have the most impact.
Even in the face of a fiscal crisis, some DOT board members are still reluctant to abandon that mind-set. The governor and Legislature should prod them along by repealing the balancing requirement, a step that would cost no money but do a lot to help spend wisely.
To its credit, the DOT may already be rethinking its past opposition to mass transit spending. At a rare summit meeting of state transportation officials Wednesday, DOT board Chairman Bill Kuhlke Jr., a builder from Augusta, acknowledged that metro Atlanta’s transportation needs probably can’t be met by more highways.
“Transit is going to be the biggest part of the answer for this particular region,” Kuhlke said.
While that statement suggests a major change of attitude, it’s not reflected in state law. The main source of state funding for transportation is the gasoline tax, and the state constitution bars use of gas-tax revenue for anything but roads and bridges. If metro Atlanta’s transportation future lies with transit, that provision must be changed.
(MARTA is also asking the Legislature to repeal a law restricting how the agency spends its own sales-tax revenue, yet another archaic provision in need of change.)
At the summit, state transportation leaders talked frankly about tapping into the billions in federal money expected to flow as part of an economic stimulus plan. But Georgia will have to change how it does things if it is to compete for that.
The incoming Obama administration has made it clear that it will fund transportation projects that cut consumption of gasoline and other greenhouse gases and that reduce dependence on foreign oil. Transit, in other words, will play a major role, and Georgia isn’t ready to move quickly in that direction.
The administration says it will also insist that states choose projects based on their transportation and economic impact, not on patronage concerns. Again, that’s not the way Georgia law and political culture work, and so far they have proved stubbornly resistant to reform.
Of course, with billions of dollars becoming available at a time of great need, maybe that could change.
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A good decision by President Bush
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“WASHINGTON — President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.
Last year, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel asked President Bush for bunker-busting bombs and permission to fly over Iraq to attack the plant.
White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.
The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily.
…. The interviews also indicate that Mr. Bush was convinced by top administration officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, that any overt attack on Iran would probably prove ineffective, lead to the expulsion of international inspectors and drive Iran’s nuclear effort further out of view. Mr. Bush and his aides also discussed the possibility that an airstrike could ignite a broad Middle East war in which America’s 140,000 troops in Iraq would inevitably become involved.”
Troubled as things are right now, the world would be in a much bigger mess if President Bush had approved the Israeli request. But I have to wonder what advice Vice President Dick Cheney was giving Bush on the topic, or whether he was even consulted. Cheney’s influence has been notably diminished since the ‘06 elections, and that’s a very good thing.
