April 13, 2009
A copy of the April 2009 Newsletter can be found by clicking the link below:
April 2009 Newsletter
April 10, 2009
April 10, 2009
Time for state elected officials to do their job — lead
By CHICK KRAUTLER
Friday, April 10, 2009
Thursday, leaders of the Atlanta region stepped up to the plate to support a vital and endangered component of our region’s transportation system, in the wake of inaction by the Georgia General Assembly.
By unanimous vote, members of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s (ARC) transportation and air quality committee passed a resolution of intent to pursue using a portion of federal stimulus funds earmarked for the metro area to temporarily fill a shortfall in operating funds by MARTA. This, in essence, would provide an innovative and short-term “Band-Aid” that would allow MARTA to continue providing service at or near current levels through June 2010.
This action by Atlanta-region leaders represents sacrifice by all local governments, but it exhibits vision and courage to pursue timely solutions to our region’s mobility challenges. The Georgia Legislature, on the other hand, failed to pass a simple measure to allow MARTA more flexibility in how it uses its own resources. So even though MARTA has about $65 million sitting in the bank for capital projects, it can’t spend a dime of it to help with the $20-plus million deficit on the operating side, and therefore is on the brink of having to cut service one full day a week.
Moreover, for the second year in a row, the General Assembly failed to pass legislation to allow residents the option to decide whether to enact a penny sales tax to fund much needed transportation improvements throughout the state.
In these uncertain economic times, is this any way to position the Atlanta region and the State of Georgia for success? There seems to be absolutely no commitment by the Georgia General Assembly to recognize the Atlanta region as a globally competitive area of Georgia and ensure that it remains so.
Globally competitive. That would be nice. It’s getting to the point, though, where our state is less and less competitive within the Southeast. More and more, folks are pointing to North Carolina as the innovative place, where Charlotte figured out how to build a new light rail system, and the state is fast connecting its metro areas through high speed rail to the Northeast corridor. And South Carolina has moved forward aggressively with new project delivery strategies, while Georgia’s transportation governance bill does nothing to insure timely implementation of the few projects we can afford.
Metro Atlanta remains the economic engine for the Southeast — for now, at least. What happens here not only affects our own state, but the mega-region that is emerging from Raleigh to Birmingham. Businesses are more likely to go where the action is — to other areas in our mega-region or other parts of the U.S. where there is vision and leadership.
Another failed attempt at moving forward with transportation funding legislation has harmed our entire state. Our state officials are elected to lead. It’s time they did so. It’s ironic that this potential and temporary solution is possible only because of the federal action to provide stimulus funds — instead of action on the part of our own state.
• Chick Krautler is director of the Atlanta Regional Commission.
April 6, 2009
Jim Galloway lays out how the failure on transportation funding could impact the race for governor, which begins in earnest now.
Transportation and the 2010 governor’s race: Not an occasion for honest conversation
April 6, 2009
Friday, April 3rd was the final day of the 2009 Georgia General Assembly. Transportation funding and governance were still hanging in the balance. Along with the 2010 budget, transportation was certainly the most highlighted issue of the day. The AJC’s Jim Galloway posted in his blog throughout the day updates on where these measures stood. Below are links to his posts which demonstrate some very strange plot twists throughout the day.
This first post is from Thursday April 2nd and sets the stage for negotiations on the final day.
On transportation: No deal, but some first movement
This is the first post of the day from a frenzied Friday.
Your morning jolt: More slogging through transportation, but this time, voter viability is the focus
This is from late morning and cites some fiery debate that occured in the Senate.
Transportation impasse continues with talk of Kool-Aid
This post was made after the 3rd conference committee meeting on Friday. As negotiations stalled, representatives of the business community showed their frustration by walking out during the conference committee.
A walk-out at the transportation negotiations – by the lobbyists
At one point in the evening, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle threw the Senate into recess in order to dispatch his Senators to the House in an effort to find a compromise on funding.
Cagle on transportation sales tax: ” I commit to you to fight to the bitter end.”
The Senate ups the ante by telling House members they will agree to the House’s version of the governance bill. The Senate had previously stated that action must be taken on governance in order to begin negotiations on funding. The House obliged them by passing a watered-down governance bill that contains provisions that makes the House by far the stronger partner in governance. It all but eliminates the Senate from the process.
Senate Republican caucus commits to House changes on transportation governance bill
The issue continues to percolate on the Senate floor as back channel emails involving communications between a DOT Board member and his Senator stirs up a hornet’s nest.
One more strange twist on transportation
This post was made immediately after the end of the session and reveals in great detail the email exchange between the DOT Board member and Senator in quesiton from above.
Behind SB 200 and the email of outrage
April 6, 2009
Lawmakers adjourn without transportation funding solution
Atlanta Business Chronicle – by Dave Williams Staff Writer
The Georgia General Assembly ended its 2009 session Friday night without acting on transportation funding, an issue business leaders in metro Atlanta and across the state had labeled their top priority.
A House-Senate conference committee broke up about an hour before the midnight adjournment without resolving a dispute over whether to ask Georgians to vote by region on raising sales taxes to pay for needed highway and transit projects, or put the question to a statewide referendum.
“The business community of the whole state is really disappointed,” said Sam Williams, president of the 
Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. “This is the third year in a row we’ve been working diligently and hard. … (Legislative) leaders have let politics take priority over our transportation infrastructure.”
In a last-ditch effort to break the impasse, Senate conferees offered the same legislation that fell just three votes short of passing last year.
Ironically, that measure, which included the Senate’s favored regional approach, was adopted by the House on the final day of the 2008 session only to come up short in the Senate by just three votes.
But on Friday night, House Transportation Committee Chairman Vance Smith said the offer came a year too late.
“We’ve moved on since last year … to better legislation,” Smith, R-Pine Mountain, told the Senate conferees. “I can’t sign a bill that we passed last year and y’all didn’t pass.”
House conferee Calvin Smyre, D-Columbus, expressed disappointment that the General Assembly did manage to pass an overhaul of the state’s transportation bureaucracy on the last night of the session but failed to reach an agreement on the funding issue.
“We worry about who’s in control but not about who gets funding,” he said.
The Senate gave final passage Friday night to the so-called “governance” bill, which was introduced on behalf of Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, in a 33-15 vote along party lines.
The legislation, which now goes to Perdue to sign, would create a planning director inside the state Department of Transportation, to be appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the governor.
The DOT still would retain its commissioner and 13-member board, but they would have less authority.
Lawmakers also wrapped up a host of other bills in a marathon session Friday, overwhelmingly approving an $18.6 billion 2010 budget with spending cuts to match a 15.5 percent recession-driven reduction in state revenues.
The cuts would have been worse if not for funds from the federal economic stimulus package approved by Congress. The education budget alone received $413 million in stimulus money.
Lawmakers also gave final approval to a state stimulus bill that included the last-minute addition of a provision cutting capital gains taxes in Georgia.
Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers said conferees on the bill decided that approach would serve as a more effective jolt to the economy than phasing out the state’s corporate income tax, an idea that was scrapped from the measure.
“Economists will tell you that removing restrictions to the free flow of capital will improve the economy,” said Rogers, R-Woodstock.
The bill also would provide businesses a tax credit of $2,400 for every unemployed Georgian they hire and keep on their payroll for at least two years.
The legislature also passed another tax incentive bill aimed at encouraging more high-tech companies to come to Georgia. It would base the amount of income tax credits companies receive on the salaries of the jobs they create and where they locate those jobs inside the state.
The loss of the transportation funding measure also doomed a related bill that would have allowed MARTA to put all of its sales tax revenues toward operational costs. Currently, the transit agency can only use half of that money to run the system. Last week, MARTA General Manager Beverly Scott warned that the bill’s defeat could force the agency to cut service one day a week to cover a budget shortfall.
Besides the transportation funding bills, the most significant legislation that didn’t make the cut on the final night of the session was a proposal to get rid of Georgia’s car tax but replace the lost revenue with a new title fee.
Because the title fee was to be capped at $1,500, opponents argued that the only beneficiaries of that tradeoff would have been Georgians who buy luxury cars.
