Doug Stoner: Dallas, Charlotte Want TIA to Fail

While speaking to the Smyrna Business Association on Thursday, state Sen. Doug Stoner, whose district now pushes into Marietta, explained that metro Atlanta voters won’t be the only ones closely monitoring the poll results for the Transportation Investment Act on July 31.

“There are some folks outside of this state who are hoping this fails,” he said. “As one gentleman I work with in Dallas told me he said, ‘Personally I hope y’all are successful. But from a professional standpoint as the chairman I hope you fail because we’re going to eat your lunch.’”

On July 31 voters decide whether to approve a one-cent special-purpose local option sales tax that would be collected over 10 years and used to fund a list of about 150 transportation improvement projects throughout the 10-county metro Atlanta region.

Stoner said other cities like Dallas, Houston and Charlotte hope the referendum fails so they can have a competitive advantage over Atlanta, which is widely regarded as one of the nation’s most congested cities. Stoner said companies take this into consideration when considering relocating to Atlanta.

“Well the reason that’s important to a major company is when they look a the Atlanta region, we have what’s called a bifurcated labor market, which sounds kind of an ugly term," he said. "What that means is how many people, if I put my headquarters here, how many people can get to that site location within 45 minutes or less. And what has now happened is that area keep shrinking in the sense of available labor pool."

This emphasis on economic development concerns Larry Savage, a candidate for Cobb County Chairman. He told Stoner he thought that some of the projects on the list were trying to accomplish too many things at once.

“If you really get into the nuts and bolts of it there’s a lot of focus on commercial development, economic development, providing transportation resources to places where they don’t have them,” he said. “And you really see conflicts there because some of these things don’t do both jobs.”

Stoner argued that any improvements to transportation infrastructure could be viewed as economic improvements and used the Bell Bomber Plant in Marietta as an example.

“The population of Marietta in 1940 was only roughly 10,000 people,” he said. “That plant employed a lot more than 10,000 people. Guess where a lot of those folks came from? They actually came in from Atlanta and the way they got here was by a streetcar. That streetcar line ran into the plant and back out. And that’s the reason they located the Bell Bomber Plant.”

Not everyone in the audience was convinced. Andrea Blustein, Smyrna’s Ward 2 Council Representative, said that as long as she’d lived in metro Atlanta traffic was “studied,” but nothing was done about it.

Stoner explained that reason transportation investments never got past the study phase was because of a lack of funding. He said the Georgia Department of Transportation operates on $2 billion annual budget. Roughly $1 billion is raised from Georgia’s gas tax and the other $1 billion comes from the federal government.

“Right now just to maintain the infrastructure we currently have, we’re spending about $800 million just to maintain what we have and approaching a billion dollars,” he said. “The gas tax, that’s how that is raised, has not been raised since 1971. And the point would be, ‘Well, why didn’t you raise the gas tax?’ Well, ask my colleagues down at the state capitol about that because there’s been no appetite to do that.”

Another member of the audience asked Stoner where the money to maintain the transportation projects would come from once they're built. Stoner replied that there was no clear answer.

“That’s an excellent point and actually this SPLOST does allow for some operational purposes, but that’s something as a region that we’re going to have to face,” he said.

However, Stoner emphasized that voters might not get the chance to make the decision about the Transportation Investment Act in the future. As the law is currently written, Stoner said voters have the option to vote on a new project list in 2014.

“But I will say this, the governor two weeks ago was at the Atlanta Press Club and the governor made this comment,” he said. “If the local regions, there are 12 of them, not just Atlanta, do not pass this, the implied threat was we’re probably going to change this law and you’re not going to be able to come back in two years. We’re going to make these decisions up in the state Capitol. We’re not going to go through this again (…)Now the question is do we even get the chance to come back in tow years and come up with a different list and take it back to the voters?”