MARTA board to pay $480,000 for lobbying

By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The MARTA board on Tuesday approved spending up to $480,000 on outside help in lobbying the state Legislature. The lobbying money would be spread out over three years, with the first year approved at $160,000, and giving MARTA the option to continue for two more years.

MARTA is in dire fiscal straits, facing a deficit of more than $80 million, and it's asking the state for help. It would like to be included in any new transportation funding. This year it also asked for the ability to fund its operations with money it already had, but which was earmarked for capital expenses, not operations. The Legislature left that issue hanging.

MARTA Board Chairman Michael Walls said the agency had to have more help in trying to convince the Legislature of its position.

Board members on Tuesday also decided to review MARTA's ethics code. They postponed a decision on whether to waive part of the code that would prevent MARTA from hiring a company that also employs a state legislator.

In a contentious work session before the board meeting, at least one board member said the only reason that MARTA needed to spend the lobbying money was it was unable to deal with Rep. Jill Chambers (R-Atlanta), who chairs the MARTA legislative oversight committee. Others expressed doubt they could trust her.

"The only reason why we’re spending this $480,000 is we can’t get along with you, we can’t get anything through your committee," said board member Ed Wall, who spoke as if addressing Chambers, though she was not in the room. "If you would deal with us, we wouldn’t have to spend $480,000."

Walls, the board chairman, said afterward that that wasn't the reason, but that MARTA needed a bigger and more broad-based lobbying force.

Chambers had told Wall that she didn’t want outside lobbyists. She also told him her door was open to the MARTA board members themselves.

Several expressed skepticism.

"The question is, will she deal with us honestly and forthrightly? I don’t know," Wall said.

"Who knows whether to believe her or not?" asked another board member, Gloria Leonard. "She could be lying again." After the meeting, Leonard cited what she said were broken promises by Chambers to support legislative initiatives.

Walls said that to delay voting on the lobbying contract with the legislative session looming in order to talk to Chambers would be madness.

"If we don’t find some type of fix next year we are going to be in a position as early as next June that we just plain can not provide service to this community," Walls said. "To me, for us to even consider saying we’re going to put off bringing on a team to help us prepare for the legislature, so we can talk some more to the person that’s been the single biggest obstacle we had, is insanity."

Chambers said in an interview that she was just trying to prevent MARTA from bankrupting itself through bad spending decisions, and that she had research to back up her positions. She said she had not reversed herself on any promises.

"I’m just trying to make sure they have some money at some point," Chambers said.

Board members' ire was up because of an e-mail Chambers sent them prior to the vote. In the message, Chambers apparently threatened to use legislation to target the seats of board members who voted in favor of the lobbying contract or an ethics waiver that was also under consideration.

A subcommittee under her committee "will examine the votes for the ethics changes and the contract lobbyist issue," she wrote. "Those members who vote in agreement to these staff proposals may see their Board seats eliminated with any future restructuring of the MARTA Act," she wrote.

A number of board members expressed outrage that a legislator would threaten them to vote in a certain way, even though she did not appoint them to the board. Walls said that when Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin appointed him, she told him that she would never tell him how to vote.

In a separate meeting, a MARTA committee put off a decision on whether to waive part of MARTA's ethics code that restricts it from contracting with companies that employ legislators.

The engineering firm PBS&J is part of a joint venture that has done perhaps $30 million worth of work for MARTA under its current multi-year contract, said MARTA CEO Beverly Scott. This year, PBS&J hired state Sen. Doug Stoner (D-Smyrna). Stoner is deeply involved in legislation that affects MARTA, but he and PBS&J representatives said he worked only on water issues for the company, never on transportation.

In addition, Stoner owns a company that helps make toilets for transit stations and it has benefited in the past from business with MARTA. Stoner said all MARTA sales were done by low bid, and he does not deal directly with MARTA, but sells to a separate company that then bids for MARTA sales. Chambers said the arrangement caused her concern.