The leader of the $8 million campaign to boost TSPLOST says the regional tax was doomed from the start; he just didn't know it at the time.
David Stockert, chairman of Citizens for Transportation Mobility and chief executive of apartment developer Post Properties, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the overwhelming defeat of the transportation tax made clear to him two hard-earned lessons:
First, nothing the campaign could have done would have overcome voter distrust in government that was magnified by the sour economy; second, political leaders need to rebuild trust through smaller projects before revisiting how to fund more expensive overhauls.
"I'm not depressed about this. Doing something is always better than just talking about it. We did something. And there's real value in that," Stockert said. "Something will come out of this. And I guarantee that this will have a positive impact on going forward. It will be catalyst for something, we're just not sure what."
At least one opponent of the tax, though, wasn't so quick to blame the defeat on external forces beyond the campaign's control. Steve Brown, a Fayette County commissioner who fought the tax, said business leaders were unwilling to entertain ideas that would have generated more support, such as a move to let counties band together on their own rather than lumping them together in one big region.
"It could have fared much better," said Brown. "I don't give them a lot of kudos for saying, 'We never would have won this thing.' They were never open to negotiation or discussion, and I think that caused a lot of problems."
The vote on the $6.14 billion TSPLOST project list was defeated by a nearly two-to-one margin in the 10-county metro Atlanta region despite one of the most vocal and aggressive campaigns by the business community in the city's history.
Stockert acknowledged a range of issues dogging the campaign, including a project list that ticked off suburban commuters and transit lovers, pushback from people who didn't buy the business community's pleas, and the lack of a popular, political front man until Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed began promoting it in the campaign's final weeks.
"I'm sure there's some part of the campaign that we could have done better. But let's say that moved it three percentage points? We still would have lost," he said. "We could not overcome the bigger dynamics out there. I don't think there's anything we could have done that would have changed the outcome."
He said that tweaking the campaign wouldn't have helped, nor would retreating from the fight.
"What choice did business have?" he said. "A referendum campaign like this requires a ton of resources, and only the business community could muster those resources. And we did. I wanted to make darn sure we fulfilled our end of the bargain: That if we had the opportunity to run this referendum, we'd do so full-bore."
Some critics also questioned the campaign's strategy of relying on voters who don't usually cast ballots in primaries. Stockert said wryly that the pitch worked, pushing turnout past 30 percent in some metro Atlanta counties, "but obviously a bunch of those people we turned out voted against us."
University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock said he was certain of one thing: Spending more money on the campaign wouldn't have helped much.
"As badly as it lost, it doesn't look like there was anything they could have done," said Bullock. "For all the $8 million they spent, it lost two-to-one."
The vote has shifted the burden of fixing the transportation problem squarely to political leaders. Stockert, for one, said elected officials need to build momentum with smaller projects "so that down the track you can do something more ambitious."
That includes overhauling the notorious bottleneck at Interstate 285 and Ga. 400 and beefing up the infrastructure around the Port of Savannah, two projects Gov. Nathan Deal said have become top priorities in the aftermath of the TSPLOST defeat.
"We're going to take our cues from the governor and the mayor, and we'll be supportive of them," said Stockert. "The ball's back with elected officials."
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