Transit plan must be equitable

By Jeff Rader

For years, Georgia’s economy has been starved of the transportation funding necessary for growth. Now, after years of legislative infighting, Gov. Sonny Perdue and his leadership have introduced the Transportation Investment Act of 2010. Although our region is desperate for more transportation investment, we should insist on a bill that supports the whole system.

The need has grown for more transportation revenue for transit systems such as MARTA to fix our crumbling roadways and expand transportation to serve a growing population. In neighboring states, new state and local transportation funding has yielded federal funding for roads, rail and transit.

While other states are reaping the rewards of their investment, Georgia’s Legislature has repeatedly fought to a stalemate, while growing needs have gone begging. All the while, Fulton and DeKalb residents have dutifully paid the MARTA penny sales tax, even as the system declined under the weight of inadequate and inflexible funding.

Perdue’s new bill presents the public with a system that levies sales taxes in 12 regions across the state. Counting the MARTA penny, Fulton and DeKalb would pay two cents for transportation; everyone else, only one. The money will be collected in local stores but dispensed by the governor’s hand-picked “Transportation Planning Director,” in league with a regional “roundtable,” that vests equal power in each county, regardless of its population and financial contribution. In the Atlanta region for instance, a Fayette County resident would have about 10 times the weighted representation of each Gwinnett, Cobb or DeKalb resident on the transportation roundtable.

Funding would support many new projects, but they would be controlled by this roundtable reminiscent of Georgia’s old county unit system of representation. There is no place on the roundtable for regional transit, and only 10 percent of the funds generated by the transportation sales tax would be left as crumbs to help pay for local needs.

Our taxes should fund a program that sustains existing roads and regional transit, and provides resources for local priorities and seed money for regional improvements that can attract federal funds.

To do that, any regional sales tax for transportation must be allocated by a board that provides proportional representation to the jurisdictions from which the funding is drawn. It must set aside funding for maintenance and operation of regional transit infrastructure, and it must draw projects from a structured planning process, not a governor’s whim.

Absent stronger equity guarantees, counties within any region must be allowed to opt out prior to a regional referendum, if they can’t support the list of proposed projects. But once they’re in, the counties should be bound by the results of the vote, in order to avoid transit gaps in the region.

Committee revisions adopted last week would make the legislation even worse. It further tightens the noose around MARTA’s neck, restricting funding for transit staffing and system expansion. The committee also wants to insert state legislators picked by the speaker and lieutenant governor into the mix, with influence over plans and projects far beyond their districts.

The current starvation diet of transportation funding has left our economy weak, and the entire state is suffering. Georgia needs to reserve dedicated funding for transportation, including transit, and replenish what had been one of our greatest strengths. But we can’t do it if the Legislature won’t get serious about fair and thoughtful legislation to get our region and the state growing again.

DeKalb County Commissioner Jeff Rader represents District 2.