It’s a volatile mix: Georgia’s electorate, tax money and the urgent need for reinforcing our rickety transportation infrastructure.
Yet, it’s from within the sharp-edged borders of this tri-cornered hat that mobility improvements must emerge.
Ten million Georgians share full title to the vexation of transportation starvation. The present and future good of this state rides on whether we can see a corrosive reality and move to address it. There is no fuzzy “They” here onto which to dump the blame for pervasive, maddening traffic gridlock. Only a collective “Us.”
And no magic wand or mystical saying exists to cheaply and painlessly ease Georgians’ transportation immobility. If it did, the General Assembly would have unleashed that genie long ago.
Instead, we now occupy a hard-working state that’s long shown signs of choking on its own success. This condition will only worsen the longer we delay treatment. At some point, unaddressed, it will prove terminal to Georgia when talented people and job creators say we are no longer worth the hassle of missed appointments, delayed goods and dollars squandered by congestion. If we reach that juncture, it will be too late to save ourselves.
Georgia lawmakers know that. It is why they’ve finally summoned the fortitude to push legislation that would begin – and only begin – making an inroad into our transportation backlog. For that, they are to be commended.
Yet, legislators understand full well the “no new taxes” shadow hanging over them. They helped create it. And it’s why they first tried to palm off to voters the responsibility for signing the check for transportation upgrades. Voters largely tore up that invoice, shellacking the T-SPLOST in 9 of 12 regions statewide.
For sure, politicians did themselves no favors along that way, from a clunky process to a final project list that was too easy to shoot down as pork barrel politics, not a pragmatic policy solution.
The distrust of government behind the “No” votes was undeniable. So are Georgia’s unmet transportation needs. They are not going away. They won’t lessen over time. Anyone believing otherwise should try a crosstown trip along I-20 or Georgia 400 at rush hour. Just don’t be in a hurry when doing it.
The General Assembly’s leaders get that. Which explains the sleight-of-hand and fits and starts which have accompanied House Bill 170, the proposal to produce up to $1 billion annually in transportation money.
Fear of voters’ wrath was behind lawmakers’ initial plan to rob Peter to pay Paul by partially offsetting the state’s tax tab with money snatched from county and local governments. This scheme led to predictable blowback and hasty, successive revisions to assuage the other levels of government.
It would have been far better had state lawmakers joined tightly with their county and municipal counterparts to level with Georgians by stating frankly that nothing good or productive in this world is free. Certainly not when it comes to the cost of creating and maintaining adequate transportation networks in a tight-fisted state ranked 49th in such investments.
There’s no escaping that Georgia needs to spend much more on transportation, especially as the federal government — which provides a bit more than half of GDOT’s budget — spends less over time. Depending on D.C. is increasingly risky, as Congress’ dysfunctional gyrations make funding and stable solutions ever more elusive.
That means Georgia should now stand up and do more for itself.
Doing so first requires a realization that clinging to the “no new taxes” mantra of the status quo will cost even more. You read that right. We’re already paying a hefty congestion premium – not in taxes, but in gallons of petrol wasted in traffic snares. And squandered in the deceptive toll of traveling metro Atlanta’s tick-tight, circuitous roads. That’s impossible not to do when winding thoroughfares here are too often the size of back alleys in Cheyenne, Wyo., or St. Louis.
There are no free meals. The granddaddy of open-market economics Adam Smith said as much, noting centuries ago that roadwork was an appropriate task for government. Remember that when Beltway agitators like Grover Norquist and his group use the “no tax hikes” cudgel to batter Georgia’s leaders who’re finally trying to address a real problem. One for which there’s no “free” or even cheap solution. Less will always be less on this issue – and leave Georgians the poorer.
Such cheap-shot claims that nothing will yield something — somehow — are seductively attractive in much the same way that snake-oil salesmen or street-corner drug dealers ply their wares, offering mythical, dangerous “cures” for real problems. Georgians should flee such siren songs.
Politically, Georgia’s leaders can’t say all that. But we believe Georgians deserve the truth. It’s long past time for hearsay, half-truths and outright deceptions to vacate the public square.
This state must find a way to begin making up lost time on transportation. Even the battle for $1 billion a year will pay for only about half of what’s really needed here.
Georgians should know that doing nothing for much longer will yield less than nothing, as we begin to slide backward toward decline and irrelevance. Only significant new transportation investment will prevent that from happening.
