Macon —- Georgia is about to undertake some painful project-cutting to fit its transportation program to its budget, state Department of Transportation Commissioner Gena Abraham told her board Monday as they met at a retreat in Macon.

A department that in reality has the money to work on about 270 projects a year has 1,470 active ones on its books and more than 9,000 planned, she said.

"We're going to have to talk about projects coming off our books," she said. "There's no other way around it."

The agency already has begun dealing with unhappy local officials as it faces shortfalls in the relatively small State Aid program, which pays for projects like paving dirt roads.

The comments came in a day of wide-ranging discussion about Abraham's full-speed-ahead reorganization of DOT, and there were some fireworks.

A reason for the retreat was board members' negative reaction to finding out she'd hired a chief operating officer. The three highest officials under the DOT commissioner have traditionally been the deputy commissioner, the chief engineer and the treasurer, all of whom the board approves by law.

"I am weary of decisions being made and then after the decision being made coming in and asking me to support it," said Larry Walker, adding that he may not disagree with the hiring decision itself.

Abraham said that was her mistake, and the board Monday passed a resolution in support of her reorganizing.

Board member David Doss voted against the resolution and also voiced misgivings about whether Abraham plans to move part of toll-project planning from DOT, where major decisions are made by a 13-member board elected by legislators from across the state, to the State Road and Tollway Authority, whose five-member board is chaired by the governor and not elected.

Abraham said she "hadn't got that far."

A related issue was public-private projects, in which private companies invest in public toll roads. Abraham said she is re-evaluating DOT's plans for such projects. Board members have criticized the projects in metro Atlanta as patchwork and not comprehensive.

Part of Abraham's plan is to hire new staff to oversee the program. Since taking the helm at DOT, Abraham has explained the plan in speeches, saying that "to be frank about it, no one in the organization but the person you're looking at has ever done a public-private partnership."

Between that and the fact that no one at DOT was dedicated full time to the program, she said at the Atlanta Regional Commission in January, "I feel really uncomfortable getting us into a multibillion dollar negotiation until we're ready."