In a blow to hopes for Atlanta regional mass transit, a blueprint for a regional transit agency was finally introduced in the General Assembly this week after more than a year of work -- and immediately condemned Friday as so thorny that it probably will not come up for a vote this session.
The big question now is what that means for the 10-county $6.14 billion transportation referendum scheduled for July 31.
The sponsor of Senate Bill 474, Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, said he had not taken a vote count and did not rule out hope. But he said that it was better to wait to get "perfect policy" and more support.
"We are going to keep on working on it," he said, and "bring more people on board before we move forward. We'll just keep on working even if it takes more than a year."
The issue was how much control the state should have over a service that it hardly funds.
SB 474 would create a regional transit council composed mostly of mayors and county commissioners to oversee the patchwork of local transit systems. The council could help the systems coordinate overlapping services, making them less of a patchwork. And the whole effort held out hope that at some point in the future, the state might begin funding regional transit operations.
However, the council would be part of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, whose board would be appointed by the governor, the House speaker and the lieutenant governor. And that state board, even if the state paid nothing for transit, would hold veto power over the local officials.
An additional issue that concerns MARTA officials would remain: A restriction on spending MARTA's own money would stay in place -- unless MARTA gave up power to the state over federally funded capital projects.
Mayors and other officials in Fulton and DeKalb counties, where taxpayers currently pay the 1 percent MARTA sales tax, lobbied in vain last year for a regional mass transit bill. They said they doubted their voters would approve another transportation tax, the 10-year regional one, if there wasn't a new regional system to spread around the financial burden they already have with MARTA.
Now some Fulton and DeKalb officials say they are so troubled by the bill that emerged that they are relieved it's on the back burner.
"This would have been counterproductive," said Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta. He called some of the provisions in the bill "insanity," particularly the terms for MARTA to control its own money.
But others said the failure to move any legislation would have a "significant" impact on voters' willingness to vote for the referendum in Fulton and DeKalb counties, where the referendum needs its support to stay strongest. Enough to defeat the referendum entirely? "I don't know," said Sen. Fran Millar, a Republican who represents parts of DeKalb and Gwinnett counties. "Time will tell."
Sandy Springs Mayor Eva Galambos had asked for regional transit governance. Now, "the fact that that bill didn’t go forward doesn’t bother me at all," she said, citing that it didn't do anything to ease the burden on Fulton and DeKalb. However, "the fact that nothing productive is going forward, that does bother me ... I don’t think it helps the [referendum] passage."
Another thing that could hurt the referendum is opposition from the DeKalb NAACP, which has joined some south DeKalb County politicians in criticizing the $6.14 billion list because it doesn't bring more MARTA rail to south DeKalb County.
Johns Creek Mayor Mike Bodker, who served on the task force that helped develop SB 474, said he understood why the state would want a say in decisions that affect the state's future, such as federally funded transit developments. But he said the bill needed more clarity on what was a state-level decision.
Bodker noted that the referendum law itself took many years to produce, and there are "plenty of folks" that say the regional transit legislation won't affect this summer's vote.
"Getting it right is more important," Bodker said.
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