The group that will pick metro Atlanta’s transportation project list for a 2012 referendum voted Wednesday to ask the Legislature for a regional mass transit law.
The Legislature adjourned this year without creating a regional mass transit agency. That makes it harder to put multicounty mass transit projects on the project list that voters will consider in the 2012 referendum. The list would be funded by a 1-cent sales tax that's also part of the vote. The list must be finalized by Oct. 15 of this year.
There are also concerns in Fulton and DeKalb counties about spreading the burden of funding MARTA. "There are those of us who voted for this legislation who are ready to work against it if the MARTA problem is not fixed,” said Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta. "That's where I am."
Although legislative leaders insisted they would address the regional transit issue next year, transit advocates are concerned.
Although some have suggested the Legislature might take up the issue in a special session this summer, including Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, that seems unlikely.
Norcross Mayor Bucky Johnson, who chairs the group drawing up the project list, said it was important to encourage the Legislature anyway.
“It’s not likely that it would happen, but there’s a possibility that it would happen,” he said.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, who serves on the panel that will put together the project list, said sending the message would keep momentum behind the issue for the next session, and also flush out its enemies.
“Someone is holding the bill,” Reed said. “If we don’t use this time certainly before the ... session around reapportionment, then we make a big mistake.” By raising the profile of the issue and publishing opinion pieces about it, he said, the group may “at least get to a point where the individuals who are holding the bill make themselves known.”
House leaders have insisted they would move strong legislation next year, but not this year.
Moments after the session ended April 14, House Majority Whip Edward Lindsey, R-Atlanta, said legislation would pass next year, but in the meantime, inaction didn’t doom having significant mass transit in the referendum.
“We’re going to have a complete overhaul of the system,” he said. “Right now, it’s a tower of Babel.”
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