Defeat leaves Deal in a bind

Deal faces an immense problem. There's widespread agreement that the region needs to fix its transportation problems to remain competitive for economic development, but there's little agreement on how to do that. At the same time, the tools the governor will have at his disposal will be minimal, thanks to cuts in federal funding for transportation and the state's own shrinking budget.

The governor, known as a pragmatist, has signaled that he will take a measured approach, working with the funds that are available. He has ruled out any possibility of asking voters again to pay more for transportation, and he does not support increases in other sources, such as a gas tax or hotel/motel tax, to fund highway construction.

But Fayette County Commissioner Steve Brown, a member of the Transportation Leadership Coalition that opposed the referendum, known as the T-SPLOST, said scaling back is not the answer.

"I'm not sure implementing what I would call a transportation austerity plan is necessarily going to make the voters any happier than the T-SPLOST plan," Brown said.

Deal finds himself in a position many of his predecessors faced. Georgia has a rich history of governors stumbling over ambitious plans for untangling the region's car-choked highways.

Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat who served from 1999 to 2003, dreamed of a "Northern Arc" that would have connected I-75 and I-85 roughly parallel to Ga. 20 in the northern exurbs. It died in 2003 after Barnes lost his re-election bid to Republican Sonny Perdue.

Perdue, too, had his asphalt albatross. In 2004, he announced a $15.5 billion "Fast Forward" plan that did have some successes, such as rebuilding the Ga. 315/I-85 interchange, widening Ga. 400 and installing highway ramp lights to regulate congestion.

After many projects had huge cost overruns, Fast Forward fell years behind schedule and billions over budget. Auditors in 2008 found the state Department of Transportation's finances in disarray.

Neither Barnes nor Deal were personally responsible for those projects' failures, but both paid a political price.

"The Northern Arc was a casualty of internal politics, not any fundamental flaw," said Chuck Clay, a former state senator and GOP chairman. "It was defeated by animus toward that project. Sonny learned a painful lesson that possibly his plan was too ambitious, quite candidly, for a GDOT that was in a period of difficulty and transition."

But Matt Towery, a former Republican campaign consultant and CEO of InsiderAdvantage, said plenty of previous governors managed to make huge progress on transportation.

"Zell Miller, George Busbee, Joe Frank Harris, Roy Barnes, they all ran transportation in this state, and we built a lot of roads and got a lot done," Towery said.

Former DOT Commissioner Harold Linnenkohl said the state's problems with transportation come from several factors.

One is the alphabet soup of agencies that are now involved. In addition to the DOT, there's the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority that deals with commuter and intermodal programs, as well as the State Road and Tollway Authority.

"You've got everybody with their hands in it," Linnenkohl said, although he believes the three agencies have worked well together.

"The problem is there's just not a lot of money," he said. "The past three governors, the money has started going down. We don't have the availability of money in transportation that we had several years ago, back to like 2000."

Federal money for transportation has been cut 8 percent, or $700 million, Deal said, and the recession has shrunk Georgia's budget to about $2 billion, smaller than it has been any year since 2009.

Meanwhile, Linnenkohl said, the cost of construction has skyrocketed as countries around the world develop and put a strain on the supply of available materials.

Finally, he said, there was the practice of people who are not transportation experts telling the engineers what to do.

"You saw people trying to get involved in telling engineers how to do their business," he said. "I'm not a doctor. When I go to the doctor I don't tell him what to do."

Erick Erickson, a WSB radio host and editor of Redstate.com, believes Deal has the skills to make the improvements the region needs. Deal built a reputation as a pragmatist while serving in the U.S. House from 1993 to 2010.

"Whether it was educational issues or what have you, he was always information-based and technocratic-based," Erickson said. "First of all, remember, one of the smart things he's done is, for all my criticism of DOT, he's actually put a DOT engineer in charge as commissioner rather than have a random political guy in charge.

"You start there and bring in some outside engineering guys and say we've actually studied this and say this will actually solve congestion in Georgia."

Deal's new stance puts him opposite allies in the referendum fight such as Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, who late on the night of the vote said it sometimes takes several tries to persuade voters to enact massive projects like this. Opponents of the referendum such as Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, continue to find themselves out of step with Deal's new position.

Rogers on Thursday told Channel 2 Action News that he would support a new concept to allow counties to band together to create their own plans for new infrastructure. Rogers said he would like for Deal to "meet him halfway."

"If he's willing to lead, we're willing to get in there with him and make this happen," Rogers said. "It was a big defeat for everyone who started this process and was supporting this process. But that's yesterday. Today, the traffic problem still exists and we've got to all come together and get it fixed."

Debbie Dooley, a tea party activist and a vocal opponent of last week's referendum, said Deal should support the concept of allowing local governments to hold their own transportation tax votes. She also warned that the governor and lawmakers should not "act like spoiled children who did not get their way."

"He is a man of the people," Dooley said of Deal. "We have an election in 2014, and I'm sure they don't want to look like they're upset because they did not get their way. Voters will view that in a negative way."

It's difficult to weigh what impact the failed tax vote could have on Deal.

Deal took office in 2011, a year after lawmakers and Perdue created the regional tax votes to pay for transportation improvements.

Voters in three regions approved the penny tax increase while metro Atlanta voters overwhelmingly rejected the 1-cent sales tax increase.

Deal inherited the referendum and had no role in creating the metro Atlanta project list that included more than 150 proposals for roads, rail and other infrastructure work.

"This was not looked at in metro Atlanta as the 'Deal deal,' "said Clay, the former state senator and Georgia Republican Party chairman.

Deal is not free of criticism for the referendum's failure. While Reed was the plan's most vocal and visible proponent,

Deal did much of his campaigning behind the scenes. He helped raise money for the $8 million campaign, and he said all the right things about it when he was asked about it.

But the governor waited until the day before the vote to give his most impassioned and public support. That was when he and Reed stood together in the Capitol for a pep rally and news conference to back the referendum.

It didn't work, as 63 percent of metro Atlanta voters rejected the referendum.

But Towery said Deal was victimized by "the worst campaign I've ever seen."

"This is the Hindenberg of Georgia campaigns," he said. "Oh, the humanity."

One person who worked on the campaign said that it would not have made much difference had Deal been as active as Reed.

Nobody could have saved the referendum, this person, who had knowledge of the governor's role in the campaign, said on the condition that he not be named for fear of damaging future employment.

"So what Deal did or didn't do really doesn't matter," he said. "Of course, he didn't do all he could, but he never liked the concept from the beginning. He did just enough to make sure when he goes to the business community for his re-election they will remember."

Proving the divisive nature of the referendum campaign, opponents of the tax referendum say Deal did too much.

Deal has political liability coming out of the vote, said Jack Staver, chairman of the Transportation Leadership Coalition, which opposed the tax plan.

"He's going to have to," Staver said. "He signed up for it, and he's pushed the thing as hard as he's ever pushed anything. He has a lot of culpability in this."