At some point, the window of opportunity will slam shut.
And on transportation, it’s possible that Georgia and metro Atlanta have already passed that point. While we’ve dithered and fretted for some two decades, trying to gin up enough political courage to do the smart thing, the right thing, the necessary thing, competing regions have been funding and building the modern infrastructure they will need to carry them well into the 21st century.
We have not.
We were once leaders, but have become stragglers. We once anticipated the future and we prepared for it, reached for it; now we act frightened and intimidated by it. We were once the beacon of the South for young people who were eager to make their mark on the larger world; the data now tell us that ambitious, smart, educated young people are looking to make their futures elsewhere, in cities and metropolitan areas with more vibrant downtowns and transit options.
We have bought into the myth that whatever economic growth we’ve enjoyed has come about because of a low-tax, lax-regulation, anti-union business environment, and that is a misreading of history. That certainly describes the strategy that many of our Southern neighbors employed decade after decade, but we became the Empire State of the South because our municipal and state leadership took another course.
Since Atlanta’s founding as the terminus for a state-funded railroad line, our prosperity has been founded upon major public investments in transportation. While we’ve stopped doing that, Charlotte, Houston, Dallas, Nashville, Denver and other places have embraced the reality that the world has changed, that the future will be less auto-centric than the past, and that a high quality of life attracts a high-quality workforce that attracts high-quality companies.
They’ve committed to that virtuous circle. And if you look at our state unemployment rate — still the nation’s highest — and our declining household income — falling much faster than the national average and faster than our neighboring states as well — we’ve trapped ourselves in a spiral spinning in the opposite direction.
A lot of folks in politics and especially business understand that. You can sense a bit of desperation as they talk about transportation funding, in public as well as private. That’s good, because it reflects an awareness that the upcoming legislative session may represent the last, best chance to do something significant.
Even so, I’m not convinced it will happen. What we’re talking about is significant tax increases, although in reality such hikes would merely restore the buying power that has been lost through decades of inflation and neglect. We’re also talking about a clear state commitment to transit. Those will be hard things for Republican legislators to embrace, and votes from minority Democrats will be needed to bail them out. I'm not sure how eager the Democrats will be to perform that service.
Put bluntly, why should Democrats provide the lion’s share of the votes for politically unpopular tax hikes, allowing the Republican majority to preserve its ideological purity and resume bashing the Democrats as tax-raisers in the next election cycle? Governing means taking responsibility, and pulling this thing off before the window slams shut will require highly visible, unified, fully committed and vocal leadership from top Republicans to bring legislators of both parties along with them. Otherwise, it’s going nowhere.
So far I don’t see it.
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