Comprehensive coverage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will have Georgia’s largest team covering the Legislature in January. No one will have more expertise on issues that matter to taxpayers when legislators return.
As lawmakers and business leaders readied a plan to fund Georgia’s growing transportation needs, a major dispute emerged: how to make any possible tax increase palatable to a tax-averse population.
The proposed answer: increase the state sales tax by a penny, but use half of it for transportation and half for a cut to the state income tax. But in the final hours before the Joint Study Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Funding’s plan was released Tuesday, that swap was replaced with the directive to allow the General Assembly to decide how to spend the potential $1.4 billion windfall that a sales tax increase would bring.
The difference is an important one as lawmakers prepare to return to session in January and debate how to — or whether — to come up with a minimum of $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year that the study committee said the state needs just to maintain its current system of roads, bridges and transit.
The earlier version is more attractive to conservatives, who likely will oppose any tax increase without a corresponding cut. Democrats, meanwhile, will likely be more pleased with the final report, as they typically oppose replacing taxes on income with taxes on consumption, which they believe disproportionately affect lower-income people.
The committee’s report is the culmination of months of work and comes two years after metro Atlanta and much of the state voted against implementing a new sales tax to fund regional transportation projects. While the report has been greatly expected, it only includes a host of options to fund transportation, not a set of recommendations. Those options include the aforementioned sales tax increase, as well as a potential increase in existing motor fuel taxes.
Three committee members confirmed Wednesday that an earlier draft of the report included the caveat that half of any sales tax increase go to transportation and the other to reducing the income tax.
House Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Roberts, R-Oscilla, a co-chairman of the study committee, said “the general consensus was, let’s do a penny (increase) and let the General Assembly decide. They may want to take the other half and put it to something else.”
Roberts, however, also said if the penny sales tax increase is proposed, he would support using half of it to cut the income tax.
Former Rep. Edward Lindsey, R-Atlanta, another member of the study committee, agreed. The earlier version of the report not only directed the tax swap, it also exempted the three regions that passed a transportation sales tax in 2012 from paying the proposed new penny.
“A lot of us felt that was getting too deep into the weeds,” Lindsey said. “We simply wanted to put it out there and give the Legislature some flexibility on it.”
Rep. Calvin Smyre, D-Columbus, one of two Democratic lawmakers on the 16-member committee, also said giving the Legislature discretion was the proper path.
“It was my opinion the report should be clean and not speak to specifics of what the legislation might include,” said Smyre, the longest-serving House member.
Meanwhile, Democratic reaction was mixed to another key part of the committee’s report. The report included an important commitment to growing and funding transit and public transportation, something that the General Assembly has not always supported.
Neill Herring, a veteran environmental lobbyist and Capitol observer, said the report includes an important first step.
“I’m glad they finally awakened to the fact that transit is the future of the state,” Herring said.
But Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, was not nearly as enamored.
“Their talk about transit is very superficial,” Fort said. “There’s no real money associated with it. I don’t even think there’s a mechanism to raise the money. It’s a weak proposal as far as transit is concerned.”
About the Author
