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Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Road to traffic relief not paved with these pennies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fifteen miles, State Capitol to Cobb County.
A state trooper at the wheel.
Game time, 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
House Speaker Glenn Richardson, en route to his son’s baseball game, agreed with his driver to depart the Capitol at 3:45. “And we did.”
“I missed the first pitch,” said Richardson. “One hour and 30 minutes to get to Cobb County.
“How much money is it costing us in lost productivity?” Richardson asked. “What is it costing us right now to sit still in traffic?”
He was arguing before the Georgia House of Representatives, successfully as it turned out, for passage of a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow voters on a regional basis to tax themselves another penny. A House-Senate conference committee is now attempting to resolve differences between their two versions.
Traffic congestion is killing metro Atlanta. “It’s time to lead and do something” to buy congestion relief, said Richardson.
Whether the sales tax is the solution, or even a meaningful part of it, is an unanswered question.
Desirably, the state would have a statewide plan, and a regional approach would be consistent with it. For metro Atlanta and perhaps for other areas as well, congestion relief would be top priority. Solutions would be consistent with a state plan and would be chosen on the basis of the most relief for the dollar.
Absent that, we have a proposed amendment that has significant flaws.
A regional commission, which may or may not have any transportation planning expertise, “shall determine the amount of the tax to be levied, the maximum period of time the tax shall be levied, and the maximum cost of such projects for transportation purposes.”
There’s no time limit on the tax. It can be 10 years or 50. After a regional government determines which projects it wants to fund —- and those can be “public transit, rails, airports, buses, seaports, and all accompanying infrastructure and services necessary to provide access to those transportation facilities” —- county commissions have 45 days to opt in or out. If they do nothing for 45 days, they’re automatically recorded as having opted in. If they vote no, they have 15 days to reconsider.
Once they opt in, a tax referendum will be held. So a referendum in Cobb County could be rejected overwhelmingly by local voters, but if approved with sufficient margins in other counties, it would be applied —- 10 years, 50 years to Cobb residents as well.
The tax, once collected, becomes dedicated —- meaning that the General Assembly and the state have no real role to play in how it is spent. The General Assembly passes it along, ultimately, to the regional governments to spend. It is, in that sense, a dedicated fund of the sort that the General Assembly should never agree to create. All taxes collected, whether they are called taxes, fees or add-ons, should go into the state’s general fund to be spent based on priorities —- and whether specific expenditures are consistent with state goals.
Congestion relief for metro Atlanta, without question, should be the state’s top priority.
What is likely to happen with this particular penny, if added for “public transit, rails, airports, buses, seaports, and all accompanying infrastructure and services necessary to provide access” is that actual traffic congestion relief, measured and delivered, will compete for the same money available now.
The penny, therefore, is likely to become the funding source for “alternatives,” whether or not they provide actual congestion relief. Suddenly everything on some interest group’s wish list has a funding source.
That may be a policy choice the state wishes to make, but it should at least be constrained by a statewide transportation plan that keeps taxpayers from being forced to fund white elephant projects, like the commuter rail line from Atlanta to Lovejoy.
Certainly an argument can be made for more money for congestion relief. But the Legislature’s “do something” command should, in metro Atlanta at least, buy actual relief from traffic congestion misery.
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