Lance Lamberton, founder of the Cobb County Taxpayers Association, recently answered some questions, by email, about the July 31 transportation tax referendum.
Q: How are you telling Cobb residents to vote on the T-SPLOST, and why?
A: Cobb Taxpayers Association is recommending that Cobb residents vote “No” on the TIA [Transportation Investment Act] referendum. There are many reasons for this recommendation, but most prominent among our objections is that it is a misallocation of resources. More than 50 percent of the money would go toward mass transit projects which would benefit only about 5 percent of commuters, thereby doing little or nothing to alleviate traffic congestion, but will do a great deal to line the pockets of builders and developers who own property adjacent to proposed transit projects.
Q: What do you think should be done instead?
A: There should a closer alignment between use and cost. Privately funded projects like the Maglev line, while not a perfect solution, would accomplish a lot more with a lot less then extraordinarily wasteful projects like light rail or gold-plated express bus service. I say ‘gold-plated’ because of the outrageous cost related to benefit. Instead, we would support private sector, for-profit solutions, like optional toll roads, whose cost of use would vary according to volume and time of day. This solution is a true free-market approach, which would allow individual commuters to weigh the cost of using such roads versus the time they would lose by not using them.
Q: In your view, what is the most important transportation project that could help Cobb residents?
A: Optional toll roads in key transportation corridors and bottlenecks throughout the region.
Q: What about improvements along Cobb Parkway included on the project list? And I-75 at Windy Hill? Won’t they help?
A: Yes, but do we need a 10-year tax with lots of wasteful projects included in them to achieve those improvements? Cobb County routinely passes countywide SPLOSTs laden with pork barrel projects. Why couldn’t those intersection improvements be included in those project lists rather than dog runs, sidewalks to nowhere, or new billboards and concession stands at county parks that are only a few years old? A better way to go would be to pay for those improvements with bonds, and take advantage of historically low interest rates and the county’s Triple-A bond rating; provided this is done without a tax increase.
Q: Do you think the referendum will pass or fail?
A: [The taxpayers association] is not in the business of making election predictions, but it will be difficult to defeat a multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign which has the audacity to use taxpayer funds to finance their efforts under the duplicitous and dishonest guise of “voter education.” This is an issue which needs to be addressed by the state Legislature.
Q: How will you feel if it passes?
A: It will be a sad day for the region. It will prove once again that special-interest crony capitalists can bilk the taxpayer at will so long as they have enough money to buy the election. Voters need to be aware that not only will this 10-year tax cost families thousands of dollars, but it will also require massive taxpayer subsidies to maintain empty trains and buses.
Basic economic rule of thumb: A “subsidy” is the marketplace’s way of saying that a project is inefficient, wasteful, cannot be justified and diverts capital away from wealth producing investments. It takes, by force, money from productive citizens and puts it in the hands of those who wish to live off the efforts of others — what author and philosopher Ayn Rand would describe as the moochers and looters.
Lance Lamberton is founder of the Cobb County Taxpayers Association.
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