There Never Was a Plan 'B' For Metro Transportation -- Or a Plan 'A'

Ever since Roy Barnes left the Governor’s mansion, there has been a constant demand by metro Atlanta citizens and businesses for the state legislature to come up with a plan to fix our transportation problems.

On every survey, transportation and education were always the top two priorities. The Republican-controlled state government felt the pressure to do something about transportation. They felt a greater pressure to do nothing. Plan “A” or the T-SPLOST was the Republican effort to do nothing but claim they did something.

If the Republican-controlled state legislature passed the bill that gave us the Transportation SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) HB218, which allowed Georgians to make their own transportation decisions on projects and funding, how can the Georgia GOP be blamed for the T-SPLOST’s failure?

There have been clues. In my 2010 Legislative update from Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-East Cobb, she describes the terrible traffic problem in metro Atlanta and says, “Thank goodness for books on tape.” This was her idea of a traffic solution or a non-solution/solution.

She also mentioned that after many years of citizen pressure her Republican colleagues in Atlanta had produced some legislation. However, as soon as her colleagues got the T-SPLOST passed, they started criticizing it and working against its passage. If this seems contradictory, it is. The explanation goes back a few years.

Republicans have always been for lowering taxes (mostly on the rich) but so have Democrats (mostly on the non-rich). President Reagan raised taxes when necessary for the sake of the economy. When President H.W. Bush said “Read my lips. No new taxes.” He was not given the benefit of the doubt that Saint Ronald got, because GOP disciples had evolved and gotten progressively more conservative. A tax, any tax was now a sin; an unforgivable mortal sin that would get you kicked out of the GOP church and labeled a liberal socialist heretic.

But HB218 was not a tax increase; it was a vehicle for Georgia citizens to make decisions that their cowardly legislators couldn’t. The conservative evolution continued so that now even an indirect tax was now a sin. Bishop Grover Norquist would excommunicate any legislator who suggested anything other than a tax decrease or the complete elimination of a tax.

The Georgia legislature was in the middle of conflicting pressures. Most wanted to continue their good relationships with their lobbyist friends who paid for their elections, meals, athletic tickets, dates and vacations. At home, all they had to do was recite the guns, God, and gays mantra. This combination got them election money, votes and perks. Transportation was the fly in the ointment that could end this party for a lot of legislators.

The Georgia GOP sure wasn’t going to “man-up” and produce legislation that would help solve transportation problems. They could, however, pretend to act like legislators and produce faux legislation, like HB218, which would pass the buck to someone else, two years down the road. Immediately after passing the T-SPLOST legislation, our local elected Republican officials began to criticize and undermine the T-SPLOST that they had just voted for.

The T-SPLOST criticism by its own creators showed how two faced and deceitful they were. They would say the T-SPLOST was a good idea but there were projects in it chosen by unelected officials that were in need of improvement.

The NAACP and the Sierra Club opposed the T-SPLOST and supported a Plan B, because they were told that the few items that made the T-SPLOST less than perfect could be fixed in a “do-over.” The Tea Party is always for “good” stuff but will always find a flaw to keep them from actually supporting anything.

The AJC had an article about the anti-Plan B for transportation. For instance it says, Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, spent last spring slamming the tax, the projects on the list, and the regional structure. Nevertheless, he repeatedly vowed, as in an East Cobb forum reported by Patch.com: “We can come back in two years with a project list that’s worthy of our support.”

At a recent Cobb Sierra Club meeting, while the legislature was in session, their legislative lobbyist shared his confidence in a promised do-over. After all, Setzler had promised the Sierra Club a Plan B.

At a Cobb DOT forum last summer in the county commissioners room, Setzler told anyone who would listen not to vote for the T-SPLOST because that by March 2013, the state legislature would produce a Plan B, do-over. In the AJC article, Setzler says that he never favored a do-over.

Have you enjoyed the Republican transportation game so far? Steve Brown, Chairman of the Fayette County Commission, and writing in the Opinion section of the AJC today, wants to do it all over again. The 2nd half is about to begin and it looks like a repeat of the first half.

Brown criticizes Democrats who have nothing to do with the process, offers some hair-brained plans that won’t work, praises Ed Setzler, and criticizes Georgia leadership even though he is part of Georgia’s failed leadership.