An effort to privatize much of MARTA appears to be dead for the year but legislation giving Republican mayors more control over the transit agency’s board lives on.
State House Republicans on Monday pushed through changes to another bill that would give mayors of cities in Fulton and DeKalb counties appointments to the MARTA board, something Republicans have long sought. But Rep. Mike Jacobs, R-Brookhaven, chairman of the MARTA legislative oversight committee, did not make another run at privatization.
The amendment dealing with the makeup of the MARTA board was attached to Senate Bill 155, an unrelated measure. It is Jacobs’ attempt to get the issue moving after previous versions have stalled in the Senate. Jacobs’ amendment also lifts for one year the requirement that MARTA use 50 percent of its sales tax revenue for capital improvements.
Meanwhile, the idea that more worried MARTA backers — privatization — is apparently done for now, although with two-plus days left in this year’s legislative session, it could still reappear elsewhere. Jacobs had earlier added privatization and other MARTA changes onto SB 168, an anti-union bill, but the House Rules Committee stripped that language out Monday morning.
MARTA’s union views privatization as a threat to jobs and members have fought privatization in the Senate. It would affect collective bargaining, future employee pensions and the selection of MARTA board members, Curtis Howard, the president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 732, said recently. The union warned that some aspects of the bill could jeopardize critical federal grants because they could run afoul of federal rules protecting collective bargaining with management at transit authorities.
Efforts to privatize MARTA grew more urgent last year as the nation’s ninth-largest transit agency projected an operating deficit of more than $30 million. An audit commissioned by the MARTA board, and conducted by KPMG, concluded that MARTA pays $50 million above the national average for employee benefits such as health care, retirement and worker’s compensation. Additionally, the audit said MARTA could save at least $12 million annually by privatizing some of its functions, such as its cleaning services.
Privatization of some services has the support of the MARTA board of directors, although it prefers that privatization not be mandatory.
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