Lawmakers Take Issue With Transportation Funding Bill

by Ariel Hart
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 9, 2010

Gov. Sonny Perdue’s proposal for transportation funding is running into serious issues in the House Transportation Committee, where the proposal was debated again Tuesday.

A subcommittee on Monday passed its own version of the bill (HB 1218) on to the full committee. But it’s a version that Perdue’s floor leader, Jim Cole (R-Forsyth), said the governor would veto.

Moreover, Legislative Counsel Rick Ruskell told the committee Tuesday it wasn’t entirely clear the governor’s proposal was constitutional.

Perdue’s proposal would divide the state up into 12 regions. Each region, working with the state, would draw up a project list and submit the list to the region’s voters for their approval, along with a proposal for a one-cent sales tax to fund the projects. If a region passed its tax, the money would be spent only in one region.

However, the House’s new version would allow a region to decline to hold a referendum, if its leaders don’t come to agreement on a project list. That amounts to opting out of the vote, Cole said, and Perdue can’t accept that.

Rep. Jay Roberts (R-Ocilla), chairman of the committee, said the bill was “a work in progress” and an opt-out provision was not a dealbreaker now.

Likewise, Cole said there weren’t “roadblocks” appearing, but “speedbumps.”

For some committee members, even the House version didn’t give enough power back to the local governments. They pressed the legislative counsel on whether it was constitutional to force an individual county into a region’s tax if that county alone opposed the tax. Where members of Perdue’s staff said they were certain it was, Ruskell said he thought it wasn’t “quite as cut and dried.”

“I will go so far as to say nothing in the [state] constitution says you can’t do it. That is kind of what they’re relying on,” Ruskell said. “The other side of that coin is nothing in the constitution says you can do it…It’s unclear is best at this point.” He added that this is type of issue that often takes a court to decide. Legislators suggested that could mean the tax would get tied up in court.

Kevin Clark, Perdue’s deputy COO, defended Perdue’s proposal to the committee along with Cole and Perdue aide Jannine Miller. Clark said that most new taxes were challenged in court and they assumed this one would be too. But it legally resembled other local district taxes that had passed muster, he said, and “We think we’re on firm ground.”

http://blogs.ajc.com/gold-dome-live/2010/03/09/lawmakers-take-issue-with-transportation-funding-bill/?cxntfid=blogs_gold_dome_live

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