Ga. 400 toll survives Senate meeting

The Ga. 400 toll was originally scheduled to come down when the bonds were paid off this summer. But in September the State Road and Tollway Authority board, with Gov. Sonny Perdue as its chairman, extended the toll until 2020 in order to build projects along the Ga. 400 corridor. Perdue said there was no other way to fund all the desperately needed projects.

Hill said he co-sponsored the bill not necessarily because he opposes the extension but because of the lack of transparency leading up to the SRTA board vote in September that extended the toll.

“I think all of us recognize the need for toll roads,” said the bill’s sponsor, Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell. “However, in the case of Ga. 400, that road has been paid for many times over.”

The authority’s director, Gena Evans, seemed both to explain she had no choice in the communications strategy, which she said was chosen by Perdue from three options she presented him, and to say it was fully adequate. She spoke to dozens of groups and elected officials over the months when the toll extension was under consideration.

Some officials have said they were briefed on the idea but had no idea a decision was imminent. In speaking to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution several days before the vote, an SRTA spokeswoman refused to confirm the proposal or the impending vote, saying instead that the “SRTA’s role is to examine all options for Ga. 400. That’s the ongoing work that we do.” The SRTA released the proposal and the project list after the AJC invoked the Open Records Act and the maximum three days’ wait ran out.