Can a region that has battled for decades over transportation agree on one united plan?
Monday is the day we find out.
That is the agenda for the region’s top leaders, who by state law have until midnight to approve a $6.14 billion draft list of transportation projects spanning 10 counties. The list, if approved by voters next year along with a 1 percent sales tax, would be the area’s biggest single infrastructure investment in decades and an unprecedented grasp at regional unity.
But as cutting the list down to an affordable size has progressed in earnest in the last two weeks, areas that lost projects have erupted in anger and there is no easy way for the mayors and county commissioners to do the final cutting. By their last vote on Thursday, they had already tentatively cut more than $20 billion in dream projects down to $6.56 billion, the current list just $420 million over the $6.14 billion goal. But missed deadlines, political strains and overturned plans have marked their painful progress.
Sunday afternoon, some members of the committee said they wouldn't be surprised to see negotiations continue Monday. In interviews about the difficult project decisions still on their plate, many hoped that some amalgam of partial cuts and newfound funding would combine to make an acceptable list. But some believed their only option may be to pass the best list they can Monday, then change it over the next two months, when a final vote is taken in October following rounds of public comment.
The group's chairman, Mayor Bucky Johnson of Norcross, said Friday that, "The draft list is meant to be exactly that." But Sunday he said he still hopes Monday's list will have unified support.
As leaders turn their eyes to big-ticket projects whose removal could free up significant funds, they are running into fervent local supporters. Among the most hotly discussed project, an eastern I-20 mass transit line has some DeKalb County commissioners saying they'll oppose the referendum if the project is not on the list.
The $250 million for the project would not finance a rail line, but rather five bus stations that could later be converted into train stations. Newly funded bus service to the stations would pave the way for a rail line, a first step for a southern part of the county that has been slighted in the money allocations, said DeKalb County Commissioner Lee May.
DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis, who does not vote on the first draft but will vote on the final list, said that the important thing was to compile a list that was fair and gives mass transit its due.
Ellis is on the 21-member “roundtable” that will approve the final list by Oct. 15. He is not on the roundtable’s executive committee whose five voting members are set to approve the first draft.
Johnson, who chairs both groups but does not vote on the smaller committee, insisted Sunday that his goal was to pass a list that had support from the larger 21-member group.
“If we get this list on Monday and there is tremendous public support for this list, that would be the list that needs to go forward,” Johnson said. “If there is some tweaking that needs to be done -- we might find it early, might find it late -- but I think we need to listen to the public and understand. Because they’re the ones that have to make the final decision, not us.”
He and other committee members have described the task as among the hardest things they’ve done in their political careers.
“You’re trying to get a lot of people to work together that have only done planning together,” said Johnson. “With money attached to it, that makes it exponentially harder.”
Meanwhile, as interest groups have watched the final decisions nearing, they stepped up lobbying to protect their projects.
Debbie Dooley, a Tea Party leader who opposes the extra taxation the transportation plan would bring, called citizens to a press conference at the Capitol Monday morning.
Fair Share for Transit, a coalition of several dozen groups fighting to increase the portion of the tax that will go to mass transit, sent out a message to roundtable members Friday, pointing out that more than $78 million in the the list was going to road projects that are already slated for funding from the state's traditional road budget within the next six years.
Some involved in the decisions over the weekend said they hoped that some outside money could help to keep projects above the list's $6.14 billion line.
At the moment, it’s not likely additional sales tax funds will save the day. The roundtable requested that the governor ask the Legislature in its special session that starts Monday to revise the law in a way that might generate more tax money. But the governor’s office said the session’s agenda isn’t changing “at this time.”
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