Transportation plan survives, as House defeats efforts to cut revenue

Jay Roberts slumped at his desk. arms crossed, staring into the distance looking for all the world like the kid whose prom date left him at the drive-in to smoke with the quarterback.

The Ocilla Republican, chairman of the House Transportation Committee and author of one of this year’s key pieces of legislation, had just seen several members of the Republican leadership in the House push through a series of amendments that would gut his bill.

House Bill 170, which Roberts and supporters hope will raise more than $1 billion a year for transportation improvements, was headed to the House floor with the possibility of raising half that.

But, four hours later, it was Roberts who found himself in the end zone celebrating. The amendments were narrowly defeated and his bill sailed to the Senate on a 123-46 vote.

“I was pretty sure we had the votes,” an exuberant Roberts told reporters after the vote.

Amendments would have lowered revenue

While it's true that Roberts and Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, had claimed for weeks to have enough Republican support to pass the bill, the sudden appearance of the amendments over the past two days had thrown everything into doubt.

Roberts’ final version of HB 170 would eliminate the state sales tax on gasoline and replace it with an excise tax of 29.2 cents per gallon. That 29.2 cents has been the bill’s hallmark since it was introduced in January. But beginning Tuesday morning, some House Republicans began to express concern the tax rate was too high and advocated for something lower.

Majority Leader Larry O'Neal, R-Bonaire, proposed an amendment of 24 cents. For O'Neal, it had to be a difficult move. He and Roberts are more than friends. They're roommates during the legislative session. But O'Neal's job as majority leader is also to protect his members.

O’Neal was greatly concerned that passing a bill with the tax set at 29.2 cents per gallon would be labeled a tax increase by some and that perhaps as many as 10 Republican House members could lose their seats to a primary challenge from the right, according to several people with direct knowledge of the deliberations who were not authorized to speak on the record.

GOP leaders among biggest hurdles

The split within the caucus was evident. Rep. Calvin Smyre, D-Columbus, who supported the bill and acted as the liaison between the majority and minority caucuses, said only three Democrats voted against the bill, leaving the other 43 no votes in the GOP column.

And it wasn't just rank-and-file Republican members. Of the 13 deputy whips in the majority caucus — those members who are tasked by leadership to keep their fellow Republicans in line — six voted against the bill, as did Majority Whip Matt Ramsey, R-Peachtree City.

Also Thursday, lawmakers from Cherokee, Cobb and Gwinnett counties proposed their own amendment lowering the excise rate in their counties in the bill to 21.5 cents per gallon. Those three counties do not levy as many local option sales taxes as other counties in the state. Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna, and several other lawmakers from Cobb believed that meant they should not pay as high a gasoline tax as other counties.

“This will establish parity between those jurisdictions with the others that do have” local option sales taxes, he said.

Golick tried twice to get the Rules Committee to approve the amendment. First, in the Thursday morning meeting. But no vote was taken and no reason given. Later, at a second Rules meeting, the amendment failed by a show of hands.

But the O'Neal amendment still loomed, as did one from Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, that would require a referendum in any county where a passenger rail expansion was planned.

Study: $1 billion just for maintenance

When the bill came to the floor, Roberts spoke first and he spoke last, as House rules allow. He said he and several other lawmakers, business leaders and community officials spent last summer and fall studying ways to fix the state’s transportation “crisis.”

The study committee’s report found the state needs to raise $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year just to keep pace with maintenance needs. It would take $2.5 billion to take care of critical growth needs and billions more to get a full wish list done.

“And that’s per year,” Roberts said. “That’s not one time, that’s a year.”

Lawmakers from Cumming, from Auburn, Midway, Columbus, Eastman and Norcross spoke in favor of the bill. Only Rep. David Stover, R-Newnan, raised concerns about the bill, although he said he was neither in favor nor opposed. But Stover was once a co-sponsor of HB 170 who pulled his name later and tabbed the plan a $500 million tax increase.

But the drama was not to be over the bill itself but on O'Neal's amendment. Ramsey, the majority whip, urged his colleagues to support it. Lowering the excise tax would keep the bill "revenue-neutral," he said, meaning motorists would pay roughly the same at the pump as they do now.

“All this does is get us back to where we started,” Ramsey said. “It’s our very best effort.”

Amendments equal ‘half our goal’

But Roberts ended the debate with the admonition that adopting the amendment leaves the state hardly better off than if it did nothing.

“I believe the need is there to try and get to a billion (dollars),” Roberts said. “If we pass that amendment, we’ll be reaching about half our goal.”

Roberts said he understood why O’Neal proposed the change.

“It’s tough for me,” he said. “I understand where he’s coming from, and I understand the job he’s got and I respect that.”

There’s more down the road

Afterward, a relieved Ralston said he was proud of the House.

“It’s been a good day,” he said. “A lot of hard work went on.”

It’s not over. The bill goes to the Senate, which is expected — after all this drama — to come up with a largely different plan of its own.

"It's a difficult — you know, when you start off with a goal of raising $1 billion-plus, it's not going to be easy," Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Tommie Williams, R-Lyons, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week. "But I think there are some ways we may can get there. We've been formulating ideas."

But, he added, “our guys know we have a problem we need to fix, and we think we’ve got some ideas to get to a solution the House could agree with.”