A proposal to reshape MARTA’s board of directors that put Fulton County leaders at odds along north-south lines has been altered in search of middle ground.
Republican state lawmakers said they were trying to give north Fulton taxpayers more input on future rail and bus route expansions in their area. On the day the House passed a bill that would yank two MARTA board appointees from the County Commission and give them to north Fulton mayors, county leaders balked and ordered their lobbyists to fight back.
At issue is the shift of power to the affluent northern suburbs as Republicans have made gains in the state Legislature. Those gains allowed four new Fulton cities to form in the past decade, leaving less than 10 percent of the county’s population under direct county governance.
Several commissioners said the MARTA bill is part of a pattern of assaults on Fulton’s government by the GOP-led Legislature.
House Bill 1052 has since undergone changes in the Senate, where it’s scheduled for a vote on Monday. Under new language added by Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, each of six north Fulton mayors would nominate a MARTA member, and the County Commission would make two appointments out of that pool.
The commission would retain full control of its third appointment to the 12-member board — a Fulton resident living south of Atlanta.
“That’s better than it was,” at-large Commissioner Robb Pitts said of the bill’s latest version, “but if the north county mayors will have that privilege, then from my perspective the south Fulton mayors and councils should have the same privilege.”
Sandy Springs Mayor Eva Galambos agreed south Fulton mayors also should have input, and said she wants the County Commission out of the process entirely.
“We would have more power if we could choose two, period,” Galambos said.
The bill was introduced by Rep. Mike Jacobs, a Republican from north DeKalb County and chairman of the MARTA Oversight Committee.
Jacobs said at the time that it wasn’t power at issue, but rather “the realities of how transportation policy is set in north Fulton County these days.”
Mullis’ changes also would give MARTA an extra three years without the 50-50 mandate, which requires the agency to spend half its sales tax revenue on capital expenditures and half on operations. The current bill would extend the exemption until 2016. MARTA wants the rule lifted permanently.
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