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DEL.ICIO.USThat talk of delaying a T-SPLOST vote until 2010
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Word is going around that, in several small meetings with Georgia business leaders this week, House leaders — including Speaker Glenn Richardson of Hiram — have suggested that the Legislature might not take up the issue of funding to relieve traffic congestion until 2010.
One business leader we contacted privately confirmed the reports, but said that, for now, the statements are viewed as routine posturing aimed at influencing House-Senate negotiations now underway. No reason to panic. Yet.
Asked about the statements, Marshall Guest, a spokesman for Richardson, offered this statement:
“The Speaker has been and continues to be a strong supporter of a transportation funding and improvement plan. The Speaker is committed to taking the time to ensure that we get this right. Regardless of whether we pass a plan on Day Five of Year One or Day Forty of Year Two, Georgians will still be voting on the constitutional amendment in November of 2010.”
Only last year, Richardson became a hero to the business community when he urged more haste and less deliberation: “I do not intend to study transportation anymore. We’ve got to do something, even if it’s wrong,” he said.
The likely reason for the shift: Last week, just before Thanksgiving, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle promised the introduction of legislation in early January to permit counties and regions (metro Atlanta foremost among them) to levy a one-cent sales tax for local transportation needs.
Voters would have to approve a constitutional amendment to get it done, and that would require a statewide referendum that couldn’t occur until November 2010.
Except for the timing, this is roughly the same proposal that failed in the Senate on the final day of the 2008 session by three votes. Cagle, with ambitions of running for governor in 2010, has been trying to patch things up with a livid business community ever since.
The lieutenant governor’s only requirement for action next month was that a consensus be reached first among the Senate, House and Gov. Sonny Perdue. Hence the brinksmanship.
My AJC colleague Ariel Hart came across one example on Wednesday.
House Transportation Committee Chairman Vance Smith (R-Pine Mountain) was at a series of Atlanta Regional Commission events.
In a lunch meeting, Smith argued, “I’d rather have the right bill out the sixth week than a bill out the first week.”
Conversation continued, and Tad Leithead, chairman of the ARC’s Transportation and Air Quality Committee, noted talk that the issue could be delayed until 2010. Leithead called that “dangerous thinking.”
“But that bill’s got to be right,” Smith replied. “It can’t be just Bill No. 102 and it says ‘Transportation’ at the top. It’s got to be the right bill.”
In addition to a simple ratcheting up of pressure on the horse-trading process, there’s also the likelihood that Cagle’s gubernatorial ambitions are an issue here. Business leaders, who provide much of the cash for campaigns, consider transportation and traffic congestion the most neglected issue of Republican rule.
Passage of additional funding for traffic woes could give Cagle an early leg up in the race for governor. The House is apparently trying to exact a price for that.
As to whether it makes no difference whether the measure passes in 2009 or 2010, most business leaders would disagree. They’d like the extra time to persuade voters that additional taxes — er, investments — for easing traffic would be well worth the cost.
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Comments
By epol
December 4, 2008 6:01 PM | Link to this
Jim yeah and the only ballot issue that failed last year was what? OH Yeah the IDD which was voted onto the ballot the year before. Your logic is flawed there and I would love to see your poll of business leaders which supports your contention that they want any bill right now rather than getting it right. I know you like to stir up trouble but this is really more important than your being able to write about House Senate relations and stirring the prurient interest
By old Vet
December 4, 2008 10:19 PM | Link to this
Why should we expect anything meaningful from this lesgilature. The only transportation bill likely to pass is something that will benefit the governor or one of the legislators. i.e. a couple of years ago a south georgia legislator, who is in the logging business wanted a bill to increase load limits for logging trucks. Although the DOT warned that bridges would not support the new limits and many would have to be re-built, the legislature passed the bill anyway. The result: money that should be spent relieving Atlanta traffic is being used to build new seldom-used bridges here in south georgia. Oh, and by the way this logger/legislature who was a democrat changed over to the republican party. Pay back??????
By smithy
December 5, 2008 7:00 AM | Link to this
Old Vet, who are you talking about?
By MrLiberty
December 5, 2008 8:20 AM | Link to this
Seeing the calculating way in which new theft proposals are maneuvered by the voters makes me think that the jerks we elected are more like rapists carefully planning how they can slip the “roofies” into our drinks before conning us to come home with them.
Just disgusting. And you folks are afraid of free market solutions.
“We have to do something even if its wrong.” Spoken like a true government parasite. If it was HIS money he would actually care. That is why private solutions are ALWAYS better than government solutions.
Where has our collective common sense gone?
By MrLiberty
December 5, 2008 9:07 AM | Link to this
You know, back in the 20th century - way back then - we used to speak ill of the central planning that the Soviet Union had for “solving” all of its problems. We spoke about how the free market (that we supposedly had - but really never had) was superior because it incorporated the decisions of all players into solutions that got their signals from supply and demand and price inputs.
A heck of a lot of men and women from this country lost their lives, and billions if not trillions of dollars were spent to supposedly make sure that those nasty communists never imposed their way of life or way of government on our precious country.
How is it then in 2008 that we allow discussions by our elected officials about “transportation solutions” or “automobile czars” to run the automobile industry, or government building projects, or “airline czars”, or even the concept of turning over the distribution of our tax dollars and the printing of all monies to a non-elected bureaucrat like Paulson or Bernacke?
Are we all so deluded by the lies of the complicit and ignorant media that we would actually believe that these proposals have ANYTHING to do with free market capitolism, are constitutional, or represent anything other than blatant SOCIALISM AND FASCISM?
Have we learned nothing from the collapse of the Soviet Union? Are THEY the only ones who learned from that? If you can say in your heart that socialism is a failure and an unsustainable economic system (which it is), then why are you now embracing everything it encompasses but the label?
By Disgusted
December 5, 2008 9:11 AM | Link to this
FYI…to smithy. The legislator/logger that passed that ridiculous bill on increasing weight limits for logging trucks is now a GA. DOT board member from Cordele, GA. As for transportation, the Gov, Lt. Gov and majority of the GA legislative leadership have done NOTHING for six years regarding transportation and traffic congestion. This state is a joke in transportation among other states. Our Gov is a joke with his, what is it, T3??? Well, it is actually T Squared! TOO LITTE, TOO LATE!! across the nation, we are viewed in GA as being backward, wishy-washy and incapable of thinking from a policy rather than political view. (This applies to our public officals and not our business leaders). In addition, we now have a commissioner of DOT that is the laughingstock of the nation. The jokes about the qualifications it takes to be Comissioner/Secretary of DOT here in GA are embarassing. All of this combined leads me to think it will be long shot if GA actually does anything to address the transportation crisis. What our so-called leaders have failed to recognize is that eventually this lack of initiative will have a negative impact on our economic development opportunities and lead to a downhill spiral in our long-term economic viability. However, we as Georgians are only getting as good we elect and appoint.