Your March 21 edition of The Citizen newspaper had two distinct views on the upcoming July 31 voter referendum on the multi-billion dollar new tax called the Transportation Investment Act (TIA).
Your first view came from Terry Lawler, Executive Director of Regional Business Coalition of Metro Atlanta. To put it simply, Mr. Lawler is a lobbyist.
Lawler served in the Georgia Legislature back in the 1980s and has turned that experience into a nice career in “relationship management [that] capitalizes on synergies gained from building relationships with regulators, legislators and the media,” (www.blueridgestrategy.com/services_overview.htm).
In other words, he helps special interests get what they want by “building relationships” with government regulators and legislators.
Lawler said my views on the TIA referendum were like “running with scissors.” He is a good lobbyist and public relations man and I will give him a few points creating a distracting metaphor.
Let me tell you what Lawler refuses to tell you. In fact, TIA leader Todd Long with GDOT, Governor Nathan Deal, House Speaker David Ralston and Metro Atlanta Chamber President Sam Williams all refuse to tell you, the voter, the following points.
1. We will be voting on a plan that uses half of the funding for mass transit projects that 95 percent of our commuters chose not to use and the ridership numbers continue to drop.
2. No one at the regional or state level will tell us how we are going to pay for the exorbitant costs of expanded maintenance and operations for the billions of dollars of new transit. Permanent regional sales tax, maybe?
3. There is no cost-benefit analysis of the $3.2 billion worth of mass transit projects in the TIA referendum.
4. The mass transit projects in the referendum are only half funded and it will take an additional 10 years of sales taxes to complete them.
Conservative columnist Jim Wooten said the following about sales tax plan that Lobbyist Lawler is fighting for: “Rather than a straightforward 1 percent sales tax to finance projects that survive scrutiny on an honest cost-benefit basis, Republicans have come up with a system that continues the age-old practice of parceling out goodies to the interest groups that pack the hearings and work the bureaucracies” (AJC, Aug. 19, 2011).
Rep. Ed Setzler says, “Passed by the Legislature to relieve traffic congestion in metro Atlanta, the heavily Atlanta Regional Commission-influenced project list allocates more than 50 percent of the region’s $6.14 billion to fund transit projects that by objective accounts will do little to relieve traffic congestion” (AJC, Jan. 23, 2012).
Keep in mind that this is the plan that both former Mayor Ken Steele and Fayette Chairman Herb Frady threw their unrelenting support behind.
But there was another view in The Citizen from Benita Dodd, vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank. Dodd is fluent in English, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish and transportation policy.
Dodd said, “Proponents [like Lobbyist Lawler] are campaigning hard. Unfortunately, the plan barely translates into improved regional mobility. Operating in an if-you-build-it-they-will-come fugue, regional leaders allocate more than half the expected funds to expensive transit projects, most of which would not offer congestion relief within 10 years, if ever.”
So you have a choice. You can believe lobbyist Terry Lawler and the special interests that will make a financial killing off of your “yes”” vote for TIA without much in return, or you can believe Benita Dodd, Jim Wooten, Rep. Ed Setzler and that crazy scissor-running Steve Brown who say the project list is a racket and billions of dollars will be wasted.
I suggest that you vote “no” and we can then come back to the table and create a sincere plan based on a cost-benefit analysis with metrics to gauge success.
Steve Brown
Fayette County Commissioner, Post 4
CommissionerBrown@fayettecountyga.gov
Peachtree City, Ga.
