DEL.ICIO.USLegislature, we’ve got your number
Thursday, April 09, 2009
The Legislature has skipped town like some fly-by-night contractor with your money in his pocket. It didn’t matter that the job was half-finished, that they left an absolute mess.
They don’t care.
They don’t care that they left MARTA facing a serious financial crisis, that they once again left metro Atlanta without resources to deal with its ever-worsening traffic problem. They just don’t care.
Eight years ago, five years ago or maybe even as late as 2008, that conclusion might have seemed a bit harsh. But after watching our leaders once again do nothing to address such serious problems, no other explanation is plausible. They don’t care.
Oh, being “leaders,” they do care about some things. They care about the petty power struggles by which they define whether they personally won or lost. And yes, many from other parts of the state care about how much milk they can squeeze from the cash cow called metro Atlanta — according to a recent study by Georgia State University, metro Atlanta is already being squeezed so hard it gets just 72.5 cents in services for each tax dollar it generates.
Unfortunately, too many in the Legislature have forgotten the first rule of farming: If you don’t feed the cow, the cow won’t feed you. And the cow is starving.
For decades, Georgia has had one of the country’s lowest gasoline taxes. Are state leaders even contemplating raising that tax to help Atlanta meet its needs?
Nope.
The state constitution requires that gas-tax revenue be used only on roads and bridges, which means metro Atlanta is barred from using those funds to build the transit it needs to handle growth. Have state leaders even talked about trying to change that?
No.
MARTA is the only major transit system in the country that doesn’t get a dime from state government for operations. Is there any hope of MARTA tapping general tax funds, as legislators already do to fund rural road projects?
No again.
Then there’s the regional transportation tax championed by metro business and political leaders. Would state leaders at least let metro residents vote on whether to tax themselves for transportation?
Once again, no.
Or how about commuter rail? It’s been promised for years, and $87 million in federal money reserved for that purpose still sits untouched and may soon disappear. A year ago, even Gov. Sonny Perdue pledged strong support for rail. Has that translated into any action of any sort?
You know the answer: No.
The worst involves MARTA. It has tens of millions of dollars of its own money in a capital account that it can’t legally tap. With its revenue from sales tax collections plummeting, the agency will have to cut operations severely unless that law is changed. Did legislators deign to make even that minor fix, a fix that would cost the state nothing? No.
This is unacceptable. The General Assembly ought to be hauled back to Atlanta in a special session and asked to do its job. But that will happen only if metro residents insist on action from the officials they elect to represent them.
So let’s call some of them by name:
• Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, the governor wannabe: Does he expect to get votes and campaign money from metro Atlanta? Call him up and ask him at 404-656-5030.
• Earl Ehrhart of Cobb County, chairman of the House Rules Committee: Is he going to fight for his metro Atlanta constituents stuck in traffic, or is he pugnacious only in pursuit of his own personal political power? Call 404-656-5141 and ask him.
• How about Gov. Sonny Perdue, for whom transportation represents a last chance at a legacy: Will he take a leadership role, or will he be happy to just go fish? Find out at 404-656-1776.
• House Speaker pro tem Mark Burkhalter of Johns Creek: Call him at 404-656-5072 and ask him if doing nothing is really OK.
• And House Speaker Glenn Richardson of Paulding County, who blocked a regional sales tax vote and cavalierly ignored the pleas of MARTA: In 2008, he spoke with such apparent sincerity about the frustration of being stuck in traffic, unable to reach his son’s Little League game. What’s Mr. Speaker going to do? Ask him at 404-656-5020.
• Or Jan Jones of Alpharetta, the House majority whip. Her office number is 404-656-5024. Is traffic not an issue for the people of Alpharetta?
• Is it an issue in Dacula, represented by Donna Sheldon, vice chairman of the House Transportation Committee, at 404-656-5025? How about in Snellville, home of Don Balfour, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee at 404-656-0095?
These are influential metro legislators, people in the majority party who exercise real power.
If you’re mad, tell them about it. Because it seems to me the people of the metro area face three basic choices:
• They can do nothing, and continue to sit in traffic each day and fume.
• They can demand and get corrective action from the people they have elected.
• They can pack up the moving vans and go someplace where leaders actually care about doing their job.
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