Georgia DOT may have balanced its budget

By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

After a year and a half of fiscal panic and big cuts, state Department of Transportation officials say they think they have a balanced budget.

But the worst isn’t over, as low gasoline tax revenues continue to squeeze transportation funds, and the agency has relied on cuts that are “unsustainable” for much longer.

DOT won’t know the financial picture for sure until the state auditor finishes looking over its books in late September or October, DOT Treasurer Kate Pfirman told board members at their monthly meeting Wednesday.

Technically, for the fiscal year that ended June 30, DOT’s figures showed a $577 million surplus, after spending of $2.6 billion. But much of that is already committed to expenses, or constitutes federal funds that could not have been spent without matching them to additional state funds that the state didn’t have, she said.

In the end, the state’s budget from gas taxes, the money it has most control over, balanced out exactly, Pfirman said.

While DOT will hopefully start the next fiscal year with a clean slate, the picture is not rosy. People are driving less in the recession, and the price of gas has gone down, meaning less tax revenues for transportation. State gas taxes collected two years ago totaled $1 billion. Last year, they were $893 million. After debt payments and other expenses are taken off the top, that leaves less still.

Furthermore, administrative costs are low because of cuts, like to road maintenance, that are “unsustainable” for more than a year or two, Pfirman said.

“I have no more rabbits to pull out of the hat,” Pfirman said.

Still, it’s a far cry from the last year. Then, DOT officials and state auditors told the board they were hundreds of millions or billions of dollars overspent. The auditor’s report said that DOT had so badly recorded its funds that it didn’t snow it had overspent by $2.2 billion in the fiscal year ending June 2007.

The agency cut programs severely to deal with it. Roadside grass has gone unmowed, and trash lies in it for months. DOT’s road projects slowed to a trickle, and in some months would have been zilch if not for the federal stimulus. As in other state agencies, employees are furloughed. It’s unclear how long DOT will have to continue those cutbacks.

In the meantime, it’s a “tremendous relief” to be out of the deficit, providing the auditor agrees, said board member Robert Brown. “But we’re going to need additional funding in order to have a sustainable department,” Brown said.