MARTA begs state leaders to avert ‘calamity’

MARTA board members on Monday called for a special legislative session to avert what they called the economic calamity of shutting down service at least one day a week.

“If something is not done about these issues that were neglected this session, at some point it’s going to be too late,” MARTA board Chairman Michael Walls said, imploring state leaders to act.

MARTA General Manager Beverly Scott speaks at Monday's news conference.

Kimberly Smith / ksmith@ajc.com

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Walls said he hoped a special session would solve two issues that the Legislature left hanging when it adjourned Friday: MARTA’s crisis and state transportation funding.

MARTA’s immediate problem is that it needs money for daily operations and can’t spend $65 million it already has. State law says MARTA has to use half its income for capital expenses. The $65 million is in a capital reserve account and thus off limits to prop up operations. A bill that passed the Senate but stalled in the House would have lifted that restriction. A House bill that would have eased the restrictions did not pass.

“There is no reason for this train wreck to have to happen,” said MARTA General Manager Beverly Scott. “There are dollars that are there in an account that has been put there by folks in Fulton and DeKalb County … there is no need to wind up having the economic devastation and the personal hardship that is going to wind up happening to thousands of people.”

A special session could be called either by the governor or through votes by both chambers of the General Assembly, said Bert Brantley, a spokesman for Gov. Sonny Perdue. He said that MARTA staff had only asked recently to speak with the governor’s office about the matter. He said the governor hadn’t made a decision.

MARTA depends partly on a sales tax levied in Fulton and DeKalb counties, and those revenues have shrunk along with the economy. Scott said MARTA has already made the easy cuts. The board now must decide by June among draconian measures to close a budget gap of $24 million in the next fiscal year and $40 million the following year. That could mean laying off 350 to 400 people in MARTA’s staff of about 5,000. And, she said, it could mean shutting down service completely on a weekday, or on most of a weekend.

“That would mess me up completely,” said Candice Fletcher, 27, as she headed to a job interview from MARTA’s Lindbergh station. She said MARTA is her only means of transportation to work as a patient assistant at Grady Memorial Hospital and, she hopes, to a second job.

But really, she said, she doesn’t believe the state will let the closures happen, because it would be too destructive to too many people. “It’s wrong,” she said.