Concerns flow about transportation funding bill

By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A staid subcommittee meeting at the Capitol on Tuesday morphed into a local uprising against the heavy hand of the state, as interest groups poured out their concerns to legislators about Gov. Sonny Perdue’s transportation funding bill.

Mainstream, influential groups representing city and county officials and local business associations praised the general idea of the legislation, which would call for a referendum on a 1 percent sales tax for transportation in each region of the state. All said they simply wanted to work to improve the bill. But some were so worried about its specifics that if the bill is not changed, they would oppose it.

Some of the sticking points:

• The project list

A state official appointed by the governor would have the power to set a region’s project list if the region couldn’t agree to the list on its own. The state official also would set the criteria for choosing projects. The director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, Chick Krautler, said that if that were not changed, ARC could not support the bill.

• The region

The state sets the boundaries of each region. Voters in a region could vote to reject the tax, but no county could opt out of a region and its tax. For Perdue, that’s the way it has to be. For the Association County Commissioners of Georgia, that’s the No. 1 problem with the bill. 

• How long

The bill says if a region’s voters approved the tax, it would last for eight years. Local officials said they should be able to choose a length of time to propose to voters. The bill's sponsor said Perdue is not inclined to negotiate this one, either.

• When to vote

The bill would set the referendum vote for the presidential primary of 2012.  Tom Gehl, a lobbyist for the Georgia Municipal Association, said local leaders were better attuned to the best time to hold a referendum in their regions, considering that 41 local sales taxes would come up for a vote that year. "2012 has the potential to be a year of competing taxes," he said. "America was born in a tax revolt." On top of that, the 2012 presidential primary was likely to bring out "tea party" anti-tax voters on the Republican side, he said, while a mild Democratic primary was not likely to bring out many voters at all.

As Rep. Jim Cole (R-Forsyth), sponsor of the bill, sat through the arguments for more local control, "I was concerned with where it was going," he said in an interview afterward.  "There's a fine balance of allowing various local interests to interfere with that statewide plan." He emphasized that it was important the proposal respect the local interests, though, and that he felt "good" about where it was headed.