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Wednesday, Mar. 04, 2009

House, Senate set to battle over tax for transportation funding

ATLANTA — A new statewide penny tax for transportation projects passed the Georgia House of Representatives on Tuesday, setting up a showdown with the Senate, which has its own transportation game plan.

The House version would raise $25 billion during 10 years if voters approve the new sales tax in a statewide referendum. It would speed up construction of the new Interstate 75/Interstate 16 interchange and fund several other projects in the midstate, as well as more than two dozen major projects in metro Atlanta.

But it’s not going anywhere if the House and Senate can’t come to an agreement on transportation funding, and currently the Senate is backing a separate penny tax. The Senate’s would be enacted on a smaller scale as individual counties band together to charge an additional penny for their own projects.

“I haven’t talked to a senator that wants to vote for (the House version) yet,” state Senate President Pro Tem Tommie Williams said Tuesday.

There wasn’t much willingness to back the Senate’s version in the House, either. Representatives stripped that bill of its initial intent, taking out all reference to the Senate’s sales tax, turning it into a measure that deals with metro Atlanta’s MARTA system and passing it Tuesday after approving its own version of the sales tax.

This was always going to be a matter of negotiation between the two bodies, made even more complicated by a separate effort to strip most transportation decisions and funding from the Georgia Department of Transportation and give them to a new body the governor would have more control over. But the strength of Tuesday’s vote in the House may prove useful. Tuesday’s vote on House Resolution 206, which would call for a statewide referendum on the statewide penny tax, was 151-15.

The overwhelming margin included many Democrats in a Republican dominated body, and House Minority Leader DuBose Porter, D-Dublin, and House Democratic Caucus Chairman Calvin Smyre both went to the House well in support of the measure.

A separate bill, House Bill 277, lays out the actual projects that would be funded. For Middle Georgia those are:

Ÿ The I-16/I-75 interchange. Construction isn’t slated to begin until 2018 if new funding isn’t identified.

Ÿ Improvements to U.S. 441 from Laurens County up through Athens. A freight transfer station also would be built in Dublin.

Ÿ Improvements to Ga. 96 in Twiggs, Peach and Houston counties.

Ÿ Improvements to the Fall Line Freeway in Washington County from Crawford Road to Ga. 68.

Ÿ A commuter rail line from downtown Atlanta to Lovejoy, in south metro Atlanta. This long-discussed line eventually could be expanded to Macon.

The bill also includes massive increases in locally controlled transportation dollars, supporters said.

Bibb County would see a 191 percent increase in the local funds it could route to projects that local leaders favor, according to a bill summary provided by House Transportation Committee Chairman Vance Smith. R-Pine Mountain. In Houston County, the increase would be 394 percent. In Peach, Jones, Monroe, Crawford, Twiggs, Baldwin and Laurens counties, the increases would be between 111 percent and 360 percent.

Upping the locally controlled portion may ease some legislators’ fears when it comes time to vote on another piece of transportation legislation that eventually will have to dovetail with whatever funding legislation survives House and Senate negotiations: Gov. Sonny Perdue’s governance bill.

That legislation, which is moving concurrently through the House and Senate, essentially replaces the DOT with a new agency. The governor would appoint five members to the new agency’s controlling board, and the speaker of the house and lieutenant governor would appoint three apiece.

Since legislators currently elect the DOT board by voting within the state’s 13 congressional districts, this change would strip legislators of some of their power.

But the governor’s bill includes some control for the Legislature over local funding for projects, in addition to the money included in the House funding bill.

There’s a long way to go before this is all worked out, but midstate legislators said they voted for the House sales tax bill Tuesday because it will get projects moving. State Rep. Nikki Randall, D-Macon, said it’s not a perfect bill, but “I don’t want (to be) going home again not doing anything on transportation.”

Transportation talks fell apart late in last year’s session, and legislators have since heard complaints from roads contractors, local officials and motorists stuck in traffic. Legislators have expressed frustration with the DOT, which says it doesn’t have the money it needs to build projects it’s promised over the years.

“We allegedly are going to get a bunch of money to improve transportation in my district,” said state Rep. Tony Sellier, R-Fort Valley. “Right now (the DOT has) cancelled everything that we’re doing in my district.”

To contact writer Travis Fain, call 361-2702.