Lawmakers not on same transit track

The state House of Representatives on Tuesday agreed to ask voters to approve a new 1-cent sales tax to pay for statewide transportation projects.

The plan is in direct conflict with the Senate’s desire to allow voters on a region-by-region basis to decide on the tax hike to pay for their own local projects.

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Only one version can survive, and the Senate gets next crack as the House bill now moves across the Capitol.

Much the same scenario gripped the Legislature last year. The House then approved a regional transportation approach, but the Senate wanted to give individual counties more say. Neither happened and much bad blood ensued between House and Senate leaders.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) said the House will have to be patient. The Senate’s priority now, he said, is to deal with a massive overhaul of how transportation is managed in the state, a change that Gov. Sonny Perdue has demanded.

“I’m glad we’re moving another step forward toward finding an answer for this big problem,” Rogers said of the House’s action Tuesday. “We’ll continue to work with the House on, ultimately, realizing the financing issue. [But] the governance issue comes first.”

That’s out of necessity, he said.

“The governor has made quite clear he’s not interested in talking about financing until we have a governance plan,” Rogers said.

The man who presides in the Senate has not been a fan of the House plan. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said last month that the House’s attempt to levy a statewide sales tax would amount to “the largest tax increase in Georgia history.”

This was on the minds of many House members on Tuesday. House Transportation Committee Chairman Vance Smith (R-Pine Mountain) urged his colleagues to adopt House Bill 277 by a large margin in part to send a message across the way in advance of an inevitable House-Senate conference committee. It passed 149-18. The House also overwhelmingly approved House Resolution 206, which puts the referendum on the 2010 general election ballot. That passed 151-15.

With the House and Senate having approved different versions, a conference committee of negotiators from both chambers eventually will look for a compromise version.

“We’re making another step in the process right here,” Smith said. “Let’s move it with a good, solid vote so when we sit down across the table, we come with a good, powerful vote.”

Most Democrats voted for the bill. That’s not a surprise, as they won major concessions from the Republican leadership in the House. The bill was changed Tuesday to give Democrats a pair of appointments to a commission that would be created to oversee the new sales tax spending.

“This is such a big issue,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Calvin Smyre (D-Columbus) said. “Something this meaningful should have bipartisan support.”

It’s also likely, however, that Republican leadership was concerned it needed Democratic support or risk the bills’ failure.

But that bipartisanship ends with Perdue’s plan for changing how transportation is controlled and managed. “The fight over governance is very different from this bill,” House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) said just before the House voted on HB 277. “I can’t imagine why any member in this House would support the change in governance.”

Porter and the Democrats also won support for an amendment that would move $180 million from the state’s general fund to transportation projects. The money is part of the state sales tax on the sale of motor vehicle fuel.

Traveling back to the Senate with the sales tax bill is Senate Bill 39. It originally was the Senate’s regional approach to sales tax for transportation.

But the House stripped it and added legislation allowing MARTA to use a greater percentage of its money for operations.

That bill, too, was approved in the House and returns now to the Senate.