After weeks of hand-wringing, days of nit-picking and nearly two hours of debate, the House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to send a transportation funding bill to the Senate.
After all that, it wasn't close. House Bill 170 passed 123-46.
“I was pretty sure we had the votes,” Rep. Jay Roberts, R-Ocilla, chairman of the Transportation Committee and the bill’s sponsor said afterward.
The vote came after Roberts and his allies beat back two amendments, one of which would have gutted the amount of money the bill would raise.
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A plan to fund transportation improvements in Georgia could see even more cuts to its bottom line before it gets a vote of the House on Thursday as the bill’s financial impact craters.
Several individuals with direct knowledge of the situation, but who were not authorized to speak on the record, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that House Bill 170 will be sent back to the Rules Committee after the House convenes at 10 a.m. Rules will reconvene and hear three new amendments, after which the House will reconvene and take up the bill. Those amendments:
- Lower the excise tax charged on diesel fuel. The current would levy a 33 cents per gallon excise tax on diesel. It was not immediately clear how low the amendment would set the tax.
- Counties and cities without municipal option sales taxes, local option sales tax, and homestead option sales taxes would have their state excise tax on motor fuel set at 21.5 cents. The current bill mandates a 29-cents per gallon tax on motor fuel, although a separate amendment to be voted on by the full House would lower that to 24 cents.
- Require voters to approve any expansion of passenger rail into their county.
One estimate of the amendments’ shows that if the excise tax amendments pass, the bill would generate only about $450 million, far short of the $1 billion to $1.5 billion state leaders say is needed simply to create an adequate maintenance schedule for existing roads and bridges.
Update: Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyra, introduced the amendment lowering the excise tax to 21.5 cents during this morning's Rules Committee, but no vote was taken. Rules Chairman John Meadows, R-Calhoun, announced that HB 170 would be the subject of a supplemental Rules meeting later today to address "technical" changes. It's unclear if all of the expected amendments will be considered then.
Update 2 (2:20 p.m.) The House Rules Committee agreed to send an amendment to the House floor that would lower the state excise tax on diesel to 28 cents per gallon. But, the committee defeated an amendment to lower the tax for counties without LOST or HOST, which are Cobb, Gwinnett and Cherokee counties. The House is back in session and is still expected to take up the bill today.
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