Gov. Nathan Deal is putting his stamp on the reform of metro Atlanta's patchwork of mass transit agencies, which started last year with a study commission composed of legislators and agency leaders.
After months of hearings on different ways of joining entities such as MARTA, Cobb Community Transit and Xpress buses, legislators decided against a wholesale consolidation.
They decided instead to place the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority as an umbrella over the existing agencies, one that could administer state money but would leave the local agencies to continue operating local service, according to legislators who served on the commission.
Rather than waiting for legislators to introduce the bill for the 2012 legislative session, though, Deal's office this week announced a new task force to draw up the bill. The task force contains many of the same legislators as the commission, but not the agency heads. A spokesman for Deal, Brian Robinson, said the task force would be independent, and it was too early to know what the bill would say.
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