It’s practically an annual rite at MARTA. Officials beat the drum each year while the General Assembly is in session, insisting the state remove restrictions on the penny sales tax contributed by taxpayers for the transit system.
State law requires that 50 percent of sales tax funds for MARTA be used for operations and the other half for capital projects and maintenance. The General Assembly has suspended this requirement, known as the “50-50 split,” through June 2013, when it is currently scheduled to be restored.
Recognizing the ongoing downturn in the economy, the Legislature is likely to suspend this requirement another three years in next year’s legislative session.
However, we should not pretend that the 50-50 split serves no purpose. Its purpose is to prevent MARTA from spending all of its sales tax revenue on personnel and salaries to the exclusion of adequately maintaining its extensive infrastructure.
Critics complain that the Legislature has no business regulating MARTA. After all, these critics remind us, the state does not fund MARTA with any appropriation in the state budget. But the city of Atlanta, the Fulton County Commission and the DeKalb County government also appropriate nothing to MARTA. It is the payers of the sales tax and to a lesser extent, the farepayers, who keep MARTA afloat.
MARTA is and always has been a state authority, one created by the General Assembly in 1965 to enable voters in up to six jurisdictions to decide whether they would like to participate in funding a transit agency. In the end, only Atlanta and Fulton and DeKalb voters approved.
MARTA’s very existence was made possible by the General Assembly when it essentially created an exception to then-existing state law to allow a sales tax to be collected in several metro jurisdictions for a localized purpose.
Georgia lawmakers let the creation of MARTA happen only with state oversight. This meant creating a state authority with a board that included state officials and the creation of a state legislative oversight committee (MARTOC).
MARTA needs this independent oversight: It is an agency that takes in hundreds of millions of dollars of our tax dollars annually. Yet none of its board members is accountable to the taxpayers; they are not elected by the residents who pay to help keep MARTA running.
The General Assembly has a duty to serve as a watchdog for the residents who pay for MARTA. Regardless of what critics say, this role of the state government will not be marginalized. At the same time, it is important to periodically revisit and retool the accountability mechanisms such as the 50-50 split that govern MARTA’s fiscal affairs.
For this task, a partnership between the state, MARTA and other stakeholders is welcome.
Rep. Mike Jacobs, R-Atlanta, is chairman of the MARTA Oversight Committee.
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