Transportation funding bill prompts praise and concerns

By Ariel Hart

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

On Wednesday, Gov. Sonny Perdue’s transportation funding proposal -- a bill to put a project list and penny sales tax to voters in a referendum -- is scheduled to get its first official hearing at the Capitol. It’s a historic moment: After years of falling flat as a political football, transportation funding is starting out the session with some major conflicts ironed out and support confirmed at the Gold Dome’s highest levels. But now that legislators, county officials and others have had time to read the bill, some are voicing concerns. Here’s how the bill breaks down:

• Counties? No, a region

Georgia has 159 counties, making it hard to accomplish a seamless, big change or project of any kind unless it’s done for the whole state. This bill skirts that problem by dividing the state into 12 transportation districts. The voters in a district would approve or kill the tax, pay for it and get all the projects. The Atlanta district would comprise Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale counties.

• Who runs the region

The bill would establish a “roundtable” body for each region to assemble the project list to be put to voters -- working with an appointee of the governor. Most counties get two votes on the regional roundtable. But some counties get three if more than half their residents technically live in cities. According to the Web site of the Association County Commissioners of Georgia, in the Atlanta district only Fayette and Fulton counties get an extra vote.

• Taxation and representation

As a result, here’s where the stew is boiling:

Drawing up the project list:

In the Atlanta district, outlying counties would have the majority of votes on the roundtable over money that is largely contributed by the inner counties. Four central counties (Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett) would contribute about 78 percent of the region’s revenue, according to dollar figures for 2008 provided by David Sjoquist, director of the Fiscal Research Center at Georgia State University. But in choosing the project list, they would have only 41 percent of the votes on the roundtable, according to ACCG data. Fund MARTA? Build the Beltline? Run light rail from Atlanta a few miles outward? Such projects would probably require some votes from the distant suburbs.

Passing the referendum:

On the other hand, when the region's voters cast ballots on the project list and the tax, it could be the more populous central counties that have sway. For example, in one west Georgia region, the consolidated jurisdiction of Columbus and Muscogee County outvotes the rest of the 16-county region, according to the ACCG Web site.

• County choice

Perdue does not want a county to be able to opt out of the region's referendum.  Henry County Commission Chairwoman B.J. Mathis said that in spite of her concerns, she could live without the ability for the county to opt out in order to create projects of regional significance, such as an improved interchange at I-285 and I-75. But some officials, such as DeKalb County Commissioner Jeff Rader, are so concerned that one county would become the unfed workhorse that he thinks the bill would be better off dead if counties can't opt out after seeing the final project list. 

• Can you do that?

Democrats who introduced a counterproposal said it would require a constitutional amendment to establish regional taxes as the governor has proposed. The bill's supporters say their lawyers disagree.

• Will it be soon enough?

Not for mass transit. The referendum would take place in 2012, but MARTA is on the verge of cutting at least 25 percent of its service within months. Clayton County's C-Tran is scheduled to shut down March 31. In addition, even if the tax were approved it would sunset after eight years, which some advocates say is too short.

• Relief for transit

There are wins in the bill for for MARTA. It lifts, for three years, a restriction on how MARTA can spend its sales tax revenue and allows the new revenue to be used for any transportation purpose, including day-to-day mass transit operations.

• And the governor controls ...

A lot. An appointee of the governor would have a strong hand in setting each region's project list, though a Perdue spokesman said the roundtable would have the final say. An agency the governor chairs, the State Road and Tollway Authority, would manage the projects, even mass transit projects, though the spokesman, Bert Brantley, said the intent was for the SRTA to be a "fiscal agent.".  MARTA CEO Beverly Scott said the tollway authority is run by "fine people," but she doesn't know whether it has any expertise in mass transit. "Quite candidly, this would make SRTA quite a power," Scott said.