Perdue on secret mission to remake dysfunctional Georgia DOT

In the seventh season of his eight-year tenure as governor, Sonny Perdue has decided to reorganize two of state government’s largest bureaucracies —- the Department of Human Resources, which offers succor to the disadvantaged, and Georgia’s sad tangle of transportation agencies.

Together, they make up only 12 percent of the state budget and 17 percent of its payroll. But the federal dollars they control make them far more important.

In an age when getting there or getting help has become a dire need for many Georgians, the hazard of making a misstep while rearranging lines of command has rarely been greater.

No one argues that the streamlining is unnecessary. Both bureaucracies seem magnetically attracted to the word “dysfunctional.”

But timing is a concern. Jimmy Carter was the last governor to put DHR on the couch. Yet he did so at the outset of his single term as governor, not at the two-minute warning.

Style, too, is a worry.

The remaking of DHR has followed a traditional, relatively public route, with a task force or two to hold hearings that allowed all those concerned a say in the matter.

However, the attempt to gut the constitutionally created state Department of Transportation and the construction of a new State Transportation Authority has been conducted in almost complete secrecy.

And the 2009 session of the Legislature is at the halfway mark.

A schematic chart, outlining the proposed new flow of power and money, leaked out last week, forcing Perdue’s partners —- House Speaker Glenn Richardson and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle —- to acknowledge that something large is in the works.

The governor has run hot and cold on the issue of “governance” —- his phrasing for whether the state’s transportation bureaucracy is up to handling the money entrusted to it.

Perdue raised the competency issue last year, when the Legislature first debated —- and rejected —- a sales tax for transportation. But last June, the governor appeared to reconcile with the DOT board, celebrating with a press conference in which he recognized the DOT as “the quarterback of this team.”

A report concluded that Georgia’s failure to spend enough money to combat traffic congestion had cost jobs —- and Perdue promised a massive state transportation plan by January.

But now we are back to “governance.” Perdue appears ready to sack his own quarterback. “In transportation, the only diagnosis has been a lack of money, and the only prescription has been to spend more of it,” said Perdue spokesman Chris Schrimpf.

Two proposals for a transportation sales tax, one regional and another statewide, sit before the Legislature. Both could be swamped by legislation from the governor to change the way billions of dollars are guided toward projects. Some argue that this is a partial motive for Perdue.

The leaked chart indicates that Democrats, necessary to the approval of either sales tax measure, would be shut out of decision-making.

But geography rather than partisanship may pose a larger hurdle for Perdue. As dysfunctional —- there’s that word again —- as the current 13-member DOT board is, power is divided among 13 congressional districts. Every section of the state a voice.

Perdue’s plan would concentrate transportation policy in the hands of the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker —- with the governor holding the edge. Neither metro Atlanta nor rural Georgia would be assured of a seat at the table.

As a GOP candidate in 2002, Perdue condemned Gov. Roy Barnes, the incumbent Democrat, for his push to create a transportation super-agency. But Perdue’s version, though much larger than Barnes dreamed, shouldn’t be characterized as a personal power grab, the Republican governor’s supporters say.

With reform of the state’s transportation system coming so late in his administration, Perdue would be able to take little advantage of any new authority granted him. In other words, the governor’s lack of emphasis on the topic of Georgia’s traffic woes has made him a more disinterested and thus more trustworthy actor.

jgalloway@ajc.com