Politics & Government
Cobb lawmakers propose postponing TIA referendum
Reps. Rich Golick (R-Smyrna), Ed Setzler (R-Acworth) and Matt Ramsey (R-Peachtree City) say their proposed legislation would make the TIA constitutional and allow counties to opt in or out of the proposed tax.
State Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Acworth) and two other state lawmakers have introduced legislation to postpone the July 31 Transportation Investment Act referendum by two years; a move that they say will save, not kill, the transportation funding issue if passed.
Setlzer, State Rep. Matt Ramsey (R-Peachtree City) and State Rep. Rich Golick (R-Smyrna) are the lawmakers behind House Resolution 1350 and House Bill 938. The legislation would eliminate the TIA referendum currently set for July 31 and reschedule it for July 2014, allow counties to opt in or out to the proposed tax once their county commissions have ratified a project list and give counties the option to levy a fraction of a penny for the 10-year tax.
If passed in its current form, the TIA would raise $8.5 billion through a one percent sales tax to fund transportation projects across the region.
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Golick and his colleagues introduced H.R. 1350 and H.B. 938 because they say the transportation reform legislation in its current form has deviated from what was originally intended.
“The universally understood intent of the transportation reform legislation of 2010 (for purposes of the metro Atlanta region) was to alleviate traffic congestion and help people get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible and practical,” he said in email. “At that time local officials informed the legislature that they were in the best position to determine what projects should be placed on the list that would ultimately be presented to the voters. The legislature agreed to permit local officials to carry out this responsibility, and in hindsight we now know that was a mistake. The project list developed by the Atlanta Regional Roundtable fails to deliver on reducing traffic congestion, and the project list does not deliver value to the taxpayer. It looks more like an economic development initiative than a traffic congestion initiative.”
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However, the Atlanta Regional Commission disagrees that the project list fails to reduce traffic congestion. The commission recently released an analysis of the 157 priority transportation projects proposed by the Atlanta Regional Roundtable and their impact through the year 2025.
According to the analysis the projects would:
- Achieve a 24 percent average decrease in future travel delays for roadways, improved through road widening, new construction and improved interchanges.
- Increase daily transit trips to 580,000, compared to 417,000 trips today.
- Improve air quality equal to taking 72,000 vehicles off the roads daily.
- Enable 18 percent more workers to reach jobs in the Cumberland-Galleria area by car within 45 minutes, and up to an eight percent increase in jobs accessibility in other key employment centers.
- Achieve a 700 percent increase in workers’ ability to reach the Emory/Clifton Corridor by bus or rail within 45 minutes. Other employment centers also experience increase in accessibility, such as Southlake (42 percent) and Town Center (61 percent).
Golick, however, feels that the project list doesn’t actually address transportation issues in metro Atlanta. In particular, he cited the bus rapid transit system proposed by Cobb County’s local representatives to the Atlanta Regional Roundtable. He said he doesn’t consider the $500 million project a good value for his constituents in Smyrna, Vinings and Mableton who already have access to Cobb Community Transit.
Golick hopes that H.R. 1390 and H.B. 938 will reform the transportation funding issue.
“It postpones the vote for two years in order for the people to vote on a regional transportation funding model that would allow counties to form regions on a voluntary opt-in basis and have the flexibility to determine what projects would be of value for their respective regions,” he said. “The process would be completely voluntary and locally driven, and that presents the best possibility for delivering on the promise of reducing traffic congestion in the future.”
Cobb County’s District 2 Commissioner Bob Ott agreed that the TIA referendum in its current form is unconstitutional.
“I agree with senators Setzler and Golick’s proposal to delay the TIA for two years to make the vote constitutional,” he said. “I agree with him right now that I don’t think it’s constitutional. The argument there is that the voters in Cobb County could vote to not approve it and then have a tax imposed. My understanding and what I’ve been told is that it’s unconstitutional.”
Additionally, Ott said he thought the project list needed to be amended in light of other transportation developments like the .
“I think with the governor’s proposal doing the managed lanes obviously we need to find out if that’s going to go forward because obviously that would dramatically change what you might consider for the projects list,” he said. “The alternatives analysis that’s going on right now, I don’t believe contemplates those lanes being in place. There’s a lot of stuff that’s happening quickly here and I don’t think we need to rush.”