House Panel Moves Ball Forward On Possible Transportation Funding Compromise

By Dick Pettys
InsiderAdvantage Georgia

(3/13/08) After a debate that ran for more than three and a half hours, the House Transportation Committee got the ball rolling Wednesday towards a proposed compromise on how to raise funds to meet the state’s massive backlog of transportation needs.

Approved by the panel was a proposed constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters in November, would allow the state’s community development districts to propose specific transportation improvements projects and then ask voters in the region to approve a special, time-limited transportation sales tax of up to 1 percent.

The measure now goes to the House Rules Committee for scheduling for floor debate. If approved on the floor it will provide the framework, backers hope, for a final compromise before the session comes to an end.

It already is a major step towards closing positions between the House and Senate, which set a joint committee to work for much of last year to delve into the state’s needs and recommend solutions. That committee found there was a problem, but the House initially chose to address it with a constitutional amendment for a 1 percent statewide sales tax while the Senate proposed a constitutional amendment allowing individual counties to band together for a local option sales tax fix.

The chairman of both transportation committees - Vance Smith in the House and Jeff Mullis in the Senate - announced last week, to the applause of many of the state’s most influential business and industry groups, that they were nearing a compromise and only needed to hammer out final details.

Wednesday’s vote moves that effort forward.

The House used the Senate-passed local option measure, SR 845, as the basis for moving toward the compromise. One key difference between the versions is that the amended House measure would leave 100 percent of the money raised from the sales tax in the development district in which it was raised. The Senate version would leave 90 percent of the money there, with 10 percent earmarked for mass transit, while the remaining 10 percent would go to the DOT for projects statewide.

One of the torturous debates in the House committee Wednesday was exactly how the local referendums would work, and whether smaller counties within a development district which voted against raising the tax would still have to pay it if they were out-voted by other counties in the district.

As it was proposed to the committee and as it left committee, if a majority of those who vote in the district approve the tax increase, it will apply region-wide, even in counties where it failed.

“I have concerns about smaller counties being dragged along,” said Rep. Doug Holt, R-Social Circle, who unsuccessfully offered an amendment that would have specified the tax would not apply in counties which defeated it, even if it passed region-wide. The vote against his amendment was 17-7.

Smith, who did not preside since he was the author of the proposed substitute, countered, “If you let one county opt-out, DOT is going to have a hard time building that road around that county.”

His original proposal would not have applied the additional transportation sales tax to the 4 percent tax already collected on gasoline sales - a provision that came under criticism from committee members, who noted that while highway users would be exempt, those who didn't have any impact on the highways - farmers on their tractors and farm equipment and airlines - would have to pay the local transportation tax.

An amendment eliminating the exemption for gasoline sales passed the committee, but the panel did not exempt jet fuel, fuel used for farming or diesel locomotive fuel. Representatives of the airlines and of the railroads urged the committee during a public hearing earlier to allow those exemptions.

The committee defeated an amendment that would have required a two-thirds majority of voters in the district to approve any transportation sales tax before it could take effect. Also defeated was an amendment which would have limited the tax to metro Atlanta.