Clayton MARTA strategy on the skids

By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For mass transit advocates who want Clayton County to join MARTA in spite of reluctant county commissioners, a carefully devised strategy seems to be falling apart. At the same time, transit has become an issue in the county election.

Since the County Commission voted 4-1 last year to cancel the county's C-Tran bus service on March 31, Clayton has been the only one of Atlanta's five core counties without any regular mass transit. In the brutal economy, the commissioners said, the county simply couldn't afford it.

Although the state Legislature voted this year to allow the county's voters to decide for themselves whether to join MARTA, it is now possible they will not get that chance any time soon. Instead, they will vote in November on a nonbinding referendum to gauge their interest -- essentially a poll with no force to enact anything.

A second referendum provided for in this year's legislative session, a binding one that would let Clayton voters actually decide whether to join MARTA and pay the 1 percent sales tax for it, has not gotten a green light from the County Commission. And county commissioners do not seem disposed to give one before what MARTA says is the legal deadline.

Commission Vice President Wole Ralph, who voted to cancel C-Tran, first said it would be “incredibly confusing to have a nonbinding and a binding referendum on the same ballot.”

It would also be too time-consuming and expensive, he said -- especially in such a financially difficult year -- to put together a project list for a referendum that he wasn't sure county voters even wanted.

C-Tran cost $8 million to $10 million a year to run. But the MARTA tax would bring in about $40 million, Ralph said. He added that the Legislature should first ensure that counties in MARTA don't pay additional tax if a regional transportation referendum passes in 2012 because he said that would make Clayton's tax rate the highest in Georgia.

Those were reasons to wait, Ralph said. If the voters favored MARTA in a nonbinding referendum, Ralph said he would vote to allow the binding referendum, which he believed the county could do "any time prior to November 2012."

However, according to MARTA's counsel, election rules in the new legislation (House Bill 277) and the MARTA Act combine to make only one referendum day possible: Nov. 2, 2010.

The dominoes in the pro-MARTA strategy started toppling with the late signing of the bill (HB 1446) that mandates the nonbinding referendum. The referendum was originally to be July 20. If voters said yes, that would show the will of the county voters to county commissioners in time to persuade them to green-light the Nov. 2 binding vote on the MARTA tax.

HB 1446 was signed too late, however, for the nonbinding referendum to make it onto the July 20 ballot. For the binding referendum to be held after Nov. 2, the Legislature would have to revise the law next year, according to transit lawyers.

The local transit union and other bus and rail advocates are holding a candidate forum on Saturday, and a demonstration is scheduled for Tuesday evening to march on the County Commission meeting. At least one commission candidate, Shegale Crute, has announced a news conference for Monday "in support of public transit options." Another candidate, Dabouze Antoine, had campaign letters distributed to C-Tran passengers this spring against the bus system shutdown.

They are running against Sonna Singleton and Michael Edmondson, who voted to cancel C-Tran. Other candidates include Joyce Baul, who said she would reinstate bus service; Rosalilia Barbee, who said she supported some sort of transit but not MARTA and not at the same price the county paid for C-Tran; and Richard Regan, Lee Scott and Jewel Scott, who did not return messages.