Deficit will test MARTA's new chairman

By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Michael Tyler, the newly elected chairman of the MARTA board, is taking over an agency with quaking revenues, a massive funding hole, and strained relations with the only body that might be able to make it solvent.

So he’s girding for battle how he knows best.

“My youngest son, a 15-year-old sophomore at Westminster, was studying for his finals this weekend, and I found myself equally engaged in volumes of material trying to get up to speed,” Tyler said. “I think it may have been even more intense for me than it was for him.”

That comment says a lot about Tyler.  A corporate lawyer who talks like a Supreme Court brief reads.  A Morehouse and Harvard man who values a prestigious name in education, and the work it takes to earn it.  And one of 11 children raised by an Air Force sergeant and a stay-at-home mom.

Tyler is willing to do whatever he can to ensure that people who depend on mass transit for work and daily life will still have it.  As he takes on Georgia's largest transit agency, the mover of nearly half a million trips a day, he will need all the preparation he can muster.

In an interview with the AJC last week, Tyler revealed the transit agency’s worsening condition, a situation that will likely be discussed as the Legislature convenes in January.  MARTA officials would like to be part of major transportation funding bills that are likely to come up this session.

As a result of declining tax revenues and diminishing reserves, Tyler said, MARTA must figure out how to cut $100 million, 25 percent to 30 percent, out of its operating budget next year.  That's after a fare increase from $1.75 to $2 this year, and many cuts to costs and services.  The shortfall is four times as big as what MARTA was facing last spring, before stimulus money came to the rescue.

The chairwoman of the legislative committee that oversees MARTA, Jill Chambers (R-Atlanta), is skeptical of those claims.  She points to MARTA's reserve funds, which MARTA has decided to spend down over time rather than all at once, and to a real estate fund,  which she said totaled $107 million and can be used for any purpose.

"Every year they say they’re going over a cliff and there’s going to be a crisis, and yet MARTA’s running just fine," Chambers said.  "You can almost cut and paste the press release from the year before."

MARTA CEO Beverly Scott says Chambers' statements are "inaccurate and fail to grasp the magnitude of the crisis."

MARTA officials say the reserve accounts Chambers is referring don’t reflect “extra money"; they’re already included in the deficit figure. As a matter of fiscal prudence, MARTA is required to keep predetermined reserve amounts set aside for major contingencies.

Scott says the board is still debating how to deal with the shortfall, but what they face is "absolutely devastating."

MARTA's operations are funded primarily by a sales tax in Fulton and DeKalb counties, and its officials say it is the only major transit agency in the United States that receives no sustained state aid.  They'd like that to change.

Chambers is one of the legislators Tyler will have to deal with in seeking a solution for MARTA, and her relationship with MARTA officials has been testy.  She questions them rigorously at hearings, sometimes offering sarcastic asides.  In recent meetings she has refused to allow staff subject experts to assist the board chairman in answering questions.

Tyler says he hasn't developed a personal rapport with Chambers but looks forward to doing so. He believes she has every right to conduct her meetings as she sees fit to perform her duties.  "We’re willing to handle it either way," he said.

Tyler knows the political world well enough. As a Morehouse freshman new to Atlanta, he worked in the mayoral campaigns of Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young.  "Just the electricity in the air," he said, "It was a transformative time."  When Tyler first arrived in Atlanta from Cheyenne, Wyoming, MARTA had just acquired the city bus system.  He left to get law and master's degrees at Harvard, and when he returned, MARTA's first train service had begun.

Now he works at the law firm of Kilpatrick Stockton, representing deep-pocket clients like AT&T and making the list of "legal elite" in Georgia Trend magazine.  The magazine in his office lobby last week was the "Forbes Life" special issue "Handmade Luxury," featuring ads for Hermes, Cartier and luxury hotels and cigars.

Straddling the worlds of the elite and the guy on the street is "in my DNA,"  says Tyler. He hopes it will help MARTA achieve its goals.

"Knowing as I do how important MARTA is to the welfare of all the citizens of Georgia, I cannot believe that we will fail to do whatever is necessary to sustain it," he said, calling himself an "optimist."