It has been a tough 18 months for folks heavily invested in a certain concept of metro Atlanta.
The notion that our region is like a small solar system with lesser bodies orbiting the shining, central star of Atlanta took one hit with voters’ 2012 rejection of the T-SPLOST. Another blow came with the Braves’ November announcement they are shooting the Hooch, bound for Cobb County starting in 2017.
The reality of our decentralized area should be settling in.
But while professional sports are unlikely to point the way forward for re-evaluating what “metro Atlanta” really means, transportation still might do the job.
We probably won’t see a true “Plan B” for transportation passed during this fast-paced legislative session, which will be almost a quarter of the way to completion by the end of this week. But one of the better ideas being discussed this year may pave the way for a more modest regional concept voters could find more palatable.
HB 195, sponsored by Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, would give counties and cities far more flexibility should they choose to hold another T-SPLOST referendum. Rather than a 1 percent sales tax for 10 years covering 10 counties, as with the 2012 vote in metro Atlanta, HB 195 would let counties and cities join together on their own and levy a sales tax of 1 percent or less. It could run for as few as 3 years or as many as 10 years.
It’s a concept that, for example, would allow Cobb and Cherokee to band together with Bartow and Paulding — two counties that weren’t in the 2012 metro Atlanta region but share many transportation needs.
Or, sticking with Cobb as an example, it could team up with the north Fulton cities, the north DeKalb cities, and Gwinnett and Forsyth counties to tackle congestion stretching across the northern suburbs.
Or Cobb could line up with Atlanta to make the new Braves stadium more accessible.
Or, if its residents so desired, Cobb could do all three, levying varying fractions of a penny in each instance, perhaps for differing lengths of time. These decisions would be made much more locally, and I suspect that difference would go a long way toward allaying some of the concerns that doomed the original T-SPLOST.
If all this sounds like messy fragmentation, well, that’s what we already have. This plan recognizes we must work with the world as it is.
Truly regional needs — in the whole, 10-county sense — are things most appropriately handled by the state anyway. I mean things like the managed-lanes network, rebuilt interchanges such as the one at Ga. 400 and I-285, and any new or enhanced freight corridors to ensure shipments of goods can bypass metro Atlanta if this isn’t their destination.
Those are needs the state should address with user fees such as tolls and by directing to transportation the so-called fourth penny of the sales tax on gasoline, which currently goes to the general fund even though it represents roughly one-sixth of the state’s gas-tax revenues.
Then, these mini-regions could work together on projects that feed into metro Atlanta’s interstates, streets and yes, mass transit system.
But unlike with the 2012 T-SPLOST referendum, voters wouldn’t have to worry about what was going on a couple of counties away from them — and whether that money would really be well spent. That goes for Atlantans opposed to more suburban road-building, as well as suburbanites who didn’t want to subsidize MARTA.
For various reasons, ranging from genuine differences of opinion about the bill to simple politics, HB 195 may not become law this year. That would be a shame, because it would be good for local governments to get started sooner than later on a process that would probably take a couple of years to complete.
It also seems like better politics for lawmakers to work out any problems with the bill, produce a meaningful piece of legislation, and show they have learned from the failures of 2012 and moved forward.
If they disagree, they’d be wise to at least do the legwork necessary during this session to put the ideas in HB 195 on the fast track to approval next year.
