The state House Transportation Committee Tuesday rejected a MARTA request to be able to contract to provide rail services in areas outside Fulton and DeKalb counties.
State. Rep. Mike Jacobs, R-Atlanta, asked his fellow committee members to approve a change to the MARTA law that would permit the transit agency to operate, construct or maintain rail services for counties or cities that do not currently have it.
Jacobs sought to overcome distrust of the transit agency that exists in some areas by stressing that the city or local government would own the rail and could contract with MARTA -- or any other transit agency -- for services.
"I want to be real clear," Jacobs said. "It would be 100 percent driven by the local government. MARTA would be acting as a contractor."
The Republican-dominated committee quickly struck that section from Jacobs' proposed bill reworking the MARTA act.
It approved in general a bill that required more transparency in MARTA contracts and reworked the MARTA governance by allowing north Fulton mayors to pick two of the county's three board members and DeKalb County mayors to pick one of the county's four board representatives.
The bill also switches the voting roles of the board representatives from the state Department of Transportation and the Georgia Regional Transit Authority. The board member from GRTA, which partners with MARTA, would have a voting role and the planning director of the DOT would be a nonvoting member.
The full state House and Senate will have to approve the changes.
It was MARTA's request that it be allowed to contract with suburban counties and cities on rail services that stirred opposition. The change in the law would allow MARTA to play a more substantial role if the Legislature creates a regional transit agency.
State Rep. Steve Davis, R-McDonough, voiced concerns that the measure would allow MARTA to slip across the DeKalb and Fulton borders without a referendum by the affected voters. He noted that if a city or county rail line connected with a MARTA rail line it in effect would be part of the same system without the required referendum.
"We're talking semantics," Davis said. "It is taking the referendum out of the non-MARTA areas as long as you don't call it MARTA."
State Rep. Pat Gardner, D-Atlanta, noting the state doesn't provide funding, which comes largely from fares and a special sales tax paid in Fulton and DeKalb, failed to persuade the committee to make MARTA an independent transit agency without state oversight.
She noted state law -- currently lifted for funding reasons -- requires MARTA to spend 50 percent of its income on operating expenses and 50 percent on capital, a requirement not placed on other Georgia transit agencies and which undermines long-range planning and financial flexibility for MARTA management.
"This is not a way to run a railroad," she said. "Let me remind you where the money to run MARTA comes from. It does not come from the state. It does not come from Henry County. It does not come from Gwinnett County. It comes from Fulton and DeKalb counties."
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