Transport bills still stuck
Solving Atlanta’s transportation woes seems about as Sisyphean a task as pushing a Hummer uphill.
Advocates of a balanced approach to getting people around metro Atlanta — which is really the only approach that could get things moving again in Atlanta — almost got a solution through the state Legislature last year. But they failed because of a single Senate vote. The measure would have allowed metro voters (and, for the matter, voters in other regions of the state) to decide whether or not to levy an extra penny sales tax on themselves for transportation improvements.
This year, Senate has approved the regional transportation tax option, but the House instead passed a much bigger statewide sale-tax hike. Because the overwhelming bulk of the money in that statewide tax hike would go toward roads, that option is supported by highway contractors, heavy equipment purveyors and other beneficiaries of sprawl.
So the two state chambers are at loggerheads with only two days — today and Friday — remaining in this year’s legislative session. A conference committee is tasked with coming up with a compromise, but it’s hard to imagine how that “compromise” could be written without settling on one approach or the other.
Says the Georgia Online News Service’s Jeanne Bonner:
Many business leaders say publicly they are cautiously optimistic that a compromise between Senate and House transportation bills can be reached by midnight on Friday when the current session of the General Assembly is expected to end.
But underneath a civil exterior, many say they are frustrated that the 11th hour failure to pass transportation legislation last year has not truly served as a cautionary tale for this year’s session. A transportation bill died on the floor of the Senate last year a little before midnight on the last day of the legislative session.
I personally think the statewide tax isn’t worth passing. It would result in a tremendous waste of money on roads, many of which are unneeded vast amounts of pork for rural areas.
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