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Tuesday, Mar. 24, 2009

House, Senate still split on roads funds

ATLANTA — House and Senate leaders are playing a high-stakes game of chicken on new transportation funding programs, waiting to see which side blinks, or whether compromise can be found as the final days tick away from the 2009 Georgia General Assembly.

Both sides have dug in behind their competing funding plans, and it will likely be up to a handful of members to sit down and hammer something out.

That could start as soon as Wednesday with the appointment of a conference committee, but the disagreement dates back to before this session started in January. Either they’ll hammer something out, or the legislative session will end without a new funding source for transportation, a top priority for leaders in both the Republican-controlled House and Senate.

They have until April 3, when the session is scheduled to wrap up, and may face the wrath of business interests and voters if new money isn’t found to relieve Atlanta’s congestion and address needs in other parts of the state.

The House and Senate plans are similar, in that both would require referendums to add another penny sales tax to purchases. But the House wants a statewide tax to raise $25 billion over 10 years and fund a set list of projects, including a new interchange at Interstate 16 and Interstate 75 in Macon. The Senate wants to allow local governments to band together, calling for local referendums to pay for projects of their liking.

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and other Senate leaders stood firm behind that plan Monday, though Cagle left the door open a crack for potential compromise.

He said there are “a whole lot of ways” to marry the two ideas together, but didn’t get specific. He said he’d listen to House leaders with “a better solution” but said that solution needs to be “centered around” the Senate’s concept.

House Transportation Committee Chairman Vance Smith spoke for the House on Monday, but didn’t reveal many of his side’s cards. Asked what he expects the final decision to be, Smith said “that’s what we’re going to decide in conference committee.”

“I think we’ve got a great project list,” said Smith, R-Pine Mountain.

But Cagle took thinly-veiled shots at that list, which The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Sunday includes at least two projects near and dear to the interests of major GOP contributors.

“We don’t know where these projects came from,” Cagle said of the House’s list.

Cagle also said the Senate plan is “not a pipe dream, it’s not a fairy tale, it’s real.”

A similar plan passed the House last year, but failed in the Senate as the last moments ticked off the session. The failure deepened the traditional rift between the House and Senate, even though both chambers are controlled by the Republican Party.

Leaders on both sides have said they want to avoid that this year, but Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson said at the start of this session that, if nothing passes this year, there’s always next year.

That’s because the referendums it would take to pass either plan likely wouldn’t be held until November 2010.

State Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon, said the disagreement seems particularly deep.

“Honestly, I don’t know whether a compromise can be reached or not,” he said. “I think the Senate is pretty dug in. ... If the House is equally dug in then we’re going to be at an impasse.”

While the two sides face off on funding, they’re also working on a separate effort to overhaul the way transportation planning is done in Georgia. Gov. Sonny Perdue’s legislation gutting the Georgia Department of Transportation, and giving much of its money and power to a board the governor’s office would have more power over, has passed the Senate but has seen tough sledding in the House.

It’s due for another committee hearing today and, though Perdue has said he doesn’t want to see any new transportation funding without an overhaul of the process, Cagle said Monday the two efforts could proceed separately.

To contact writer Travis Fain call 361-2702,