Council members urge transparency around More MARTA project decisions
Atlanta City Council members are calling for more transparency from city agencies tasked with decision-making around the More MARTA project list.
Their concerns come after Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporting found a small group of officials from the city, the Atlanta Beltline and MARTA voted to stop all work on the Eastside Beltline light rail project more than six months ago.
The decision to stop work was not brought to the MARTA board of directors for approval as required, and officials from those agencies never disclosed the vote during multiple public discussions about transit plans — including City Council briefings, a community town hall event and two AJC editorial board meetings.
During a transportation committee meeting on Wednesday, council members questioned why the vote to shut down work — taken by a group called the program governance committee that is not subject to open meetings requirements — didn’t go before the MARTA board for consideration.
They also wanted to know why the City Council wasn’t notified.
“I hope that we can understand why this would rub the public the wrong way, or why this would call into question issues of trust,” Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari said to Atlanta Department of Transportation Commissioner Solomon Caviness, as he fielded questions about the vote.
“The appearance is that there was a closed-door meeting between agencies — separate from the public — that made a decision for an entire city,” she said. “And while I can understand that may not be the intention, that is the optics.”
Caviness, who is part of the program governance committee, argued the decision was not to stop the work but to pause it pending the completion of an overarching discussion around transit priorities. Mayor Andre Dickens has proposed prioritizing different projects, including light rail on the Southside Beltline Trail and four new MARTA stations.
“That was not a cancellation of the streetcar east, rather a pause to any further investment in the design and study that was put forth for the streetcar project,” he said, telling council members that the MARTA board is responsible for approving the final decision on the committee’s recommendation.
“We expect that the MARTA board would make a decision in terms of the status and the future of streetcar east,” he said.
Councilmember Jason Dozier pushed back against the characterization of the vote as a “pause” on work rather than a shutdown of the project.
“That pause was substantial,” he said. “The project was supposed to break ground last year. And so whether it’s a pause or a stop, there’re no shovels in the dirt right now.”
Documents obtained by the AJC through the Georgia Open Records Act show the vote was to “stop” all work. Two days after the meeting took place, MARTA asked HDR, the engineering firm hired to complete the design, to stop its work.
The documents also show committee members discussing how to use the money budgeted for the Eastside project elsewhere.
Dozier also voiced concern that the decision hints at a plan to walk away from transit along the Beltline altogether.
“We appear to be hedging in a way that gets us to a place where rail on the beltline is not the final product,” Dozier said. “And I want to make sure that we’re as open and transparent about what we’re thinking as far as next steps.”
Caviness assured the committee that transit along the popular trail system is still a priority for the Dickens administration.
Committee Chair Alex Wan pointed out that several council members not assigned to the transportation committee crowded into the dais to ask questions on Wednesday.
“That should be the strongest signal that you all received from us today … that there’s frustration and that we want to be part of the discussion and the dialogue going forward,” he said.
The body even floated the idea of calling a special work session to address concerns after the MARTA board’s next meeting on Feb. 12 and the agency’s quarterly report to the council committee on Feb. 25.
It’s unclear why MARTA staff never brought the decision to the transit agency’s board of directors. Or why it was never shared with the public.
A MARTA spokesperson said the vote wasn’t brought to the MARTA board because the joint group, called the program governance committee, has authority to make the decision itself. That appears to be contradicted by the intergovernmental agreement between the city and MARTA, which dictates that all “significant” changes must go before the board.
Since the publication of the AJC’s original story on Jan. 20, officials from the city and MARTA have said their actions were not secret.
“The characterization that this group is operating in secret, we felt, we took a little bit of exception to,” Hunt said at the most recent MARTA board meeting. “The group is not a public body like this group, but we don’t operate in secret. The information in those meetings aren’t secret.”
Newly elected Councilmember Thomas Worthy — who served on the MARTA board at the time the vote was taken — said he has questions about why it didn’t come before the MARTA board. But he said it’s clear the project list will have to be adjusted, and said city officials and MARTA need to have open discussions about which More MARTA projects are the highest priority to fund.
“I’m just going to say the quiet part out loud,” he said. “Everything on that list can’t be funded with the pot of money we’ve got.”
About the Author
Riley Bunch is a reporter on the local government team at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covering Atlanta City Hall. She covers the mayor and Atlanta City Council while also keeping an eye on the city’s diverse neighborhoods.
