My nits with the transportation sales tax vote
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
● What you should learn about government and the culture that grows it is this: Often the desired outcome is dictated well before “the people” are invited to speak. That will be the case with the 1-cent metro Atlanta regional sales tax for transportation. It will pass. Two crucial decisions made by politicians and bureaucrats determine that. One is the 10-county grouping. The other, now being made by the Georgia General Assembly, is to push the sales tax referendum from next year’s party primaries to the November presidential election. The decision by the Republican majority to switch to a date that will attract more Democrats further skews the outcome. Need proof? In the 2008 General Election, with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, Democrats won the 10 counties by a vote of 1,010,941 to 741,596. Two years later, Democrat Roy Barnes defeated Nathan Deal in that 10-county region by 601,323 to 512,862.
● Republicans are getting an unfair reputation as opponents to tax increases. Not so. Many, maybe most, are just opposed to leaving their fingerprints at the scene of the crime.
● Republicans under the Gold Dome are blowing one of the great political opportunities of my lifetime — the opportunity to create a culture that is open, straight with the voters and honestly committed to the principles that conservatives espouse. Transportation policy is an example. Rather than a straight-forward 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. It is absurd to allow motorists to sit in gridlock while locking in subsidy-guzzling alternatives that carry a few people from Point A to Point B, but only when government decides to move them.
● About 55 percent of the proceeds of a 1-cent regional sales tax would go to transit, which requires ongoing subsidies from taxpayers and is an option in about 3 percent to 5 percent of trips. About 45 percent will go to road improvements, though a fraction of that is road-widening, which will add carrying capacity.
● Maybe motorists won’t have to sit in gridlock, though. The 90,000 who are often gridlocked in the morning commute south along I-575 and I-75 may be able to purchase relief in the private sector. Requests for bids on reversible toll lanes are going out next Friday. I wholeheartedly support public-private tolling for added highway capacity. The danger, however, has always been that scarce public resources will go to low- and no-solution “alternatives” while drivers in gridlock would be forced to, in effect, pay twice — once as a tax and again as a toll.
● Gov. Nathan Deal sets off the alarm with his casual assertion that if the group selecting transportation projects felt it necessary to whittle $80 million from the proposed regional sales tax allocation of $180 million for the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, he’d ask the General Assembly to make it up from state funds. This is how government grows and how it spawns gimme-groups of beneficiaries. GRTA should be a coordinating agency, not a service-operating agency.
● Inventive minds can certainly devise a reasonably fair funding system that directs limited resources to solutions that produce gridlock-relief to the most people for the least money. Instead, projects are picked to buy political support. Clayton County governing officials thought, for example, that bus service was not a priority when they were being asked to pay $535,000 a month to provide it. Residents found alternatives, including carpools, vans and private-sector buses. And yet the county will get $100 million over 10 years to restart it.
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84 comments Add your comment
Hillbilly D
August 19th, 2011
10:49 pm
to Glenn @ 7:31
My comment wasn’t really directed at you. Like you, given how things have gone for the last 40 years, I wonder if Atlanta’s traffic problems can be solved. The powers that be have staked their economy on wide open sprawl and development, with little or no planning. Now the chickens have come home to roost.
A highway from Gainesville to Dalton would be 60 miles or so from Atlanta proper and in my opinion, would do nothing to relieve Atlanta’s traffic woes. What it would do would be to move the development and sprawl out a little further. Then we’d just see a repeat of what we’ve seen since the 1960’s.
Glenn
August 19th, 2011
10:57 pm
Stop it with your being pissed of that not everyone construes the Vatican of physics. Why can’t you have the decency ever to answer a person’s plea? Just to give off the Fidel self-absorption and mass-manufacture the Ego Product.
vote NO!!!
August 20th, 2011
1:31 am
Vote no on this garbage! The DOT is as corrupt as they come. I believe I recently read an article that proves such a statement. The board pressuring the commish and other staff to add a company to the contractor short list for the harbor deeping? What do you think the story would be if one of the peons were caught partaking in such “unethical” dealings? This is CORRUPTION in your face, yet it’s shrugged off as if it’s nothing…
GDOT has become a permenant stimulus package for consultants and contractors. It should come as no suprise. A very large percentage of employees are hired by these consultants and contractors after retirement. Many get top positions within these companies.
That’s what it’s all about… You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours when you retire.
This tax increase is fueled by corruption. How can you trust anything those people say? Grindlock will continue while the “buddy system” reaps all the reward. It’s been going on for years and it will continue as long as we shrug it off as business as usual. It’s time to wake up our neighbors so they take note of the corruption and lies.
Vote NO
Alan
August 20th, 2011
8:50 am
Sure lets all spend money on the “Beltway” that no one outside the city of Atlanta cares about! and other junk!
Vote NO!
Glenn
August 20th, 2011
10:12 am
Hillbilly D, you said it. I cannot believe the utter lack of planning. It’s painful to watch some of the cities attempt it within the airless vaccum of regional politics. Also, voters keep sending developers and their fellow travelers to the Statehouse. In other states those crooks would be the last persons anyone would want in proximity of a gavel. UGA and GT both have superb scholars of planning, yet I note that their work is valued mainly out of state. I share your 40-year timeframe. There was indeed a window 40 years ago, and you’re right about how the boys drove a gravy train through it. Were one to wave a wand and eradicate corruption and stupidity in transportation planning, in so doing one would redeem Georgia. Unfortunately dey ain’t no wand, only a future 40 years of hard politics. Extremely uphill work.
lugnut
August 20th, 2011
10:30 am
With regard to those that object to the outcome of the redistricting process. I offer this quote from our esteemed forever planning President in support of the redistricitng effort – “Hey – we won”.
amazed
August 20th, 2011
10:39 am
@Glenn
The transformation of the street and sidewalk infrastructure in Houston since the 70s has been amazing. The sidewalks aren’t as complete as a city like Dallas Texas, but the change has been very dramatic. Most of the areas without are in unincorporated areas or certain suburbs that never required them.
Glenn
August 20th, 2011
3:28 pm
Very interesting about Houston. I recall that Dallas floated a couple of proposals so ambitious that they could have come only from Texas. (Ever unadvisable to underestimate those people). It is, I suppose, a boringl point, but I blame the feds, to the extent that their funding is in the mix, for their archaic street standards. Sidewalks, medians, bike lanes, ADA compliance…you’d think with all the federal money going into infrastructure that the appropriate congressional subcommittees would wish to revisit these matters. If members of the Georgia delegation sit on such panels then so much the better. Normally I’d recoil from advocating federal strings, but here’s a case in which some federal attachment might really do some good, albeit at the expense of local control. I can live with the philosophical inconsistency, but obviously it’s better to emulate the Houston of your report. I presume that Georgia’s delegation is in fact well positioned, as no polition from here would be so daft as to neglect beseeching leadership for a seat on the transportation committees. Do you think it might be worthwhile to address our members directly?
Also, let me say something from Left Field. By the 1960s my home state of California notoriously suffered some fierce growing pains over this very issue. At that time a rather broad-minded governor, Pat Brown, thought to commission, Texas-style, a group of planners and futurists–among them, Kevin Lynch, Buckminster Fuller and even Walt Disney–to rethink Southern California’s problems with transport. Now obviously the Californians did some things right and a lot of things wrong, but my point is that they recognized the structural depth of the problem and at least took dire yet mature steps toward finding ways out. I hope that Governor Deal is capable of such a move. These days that level of envisioning is handled by engineers working with sophisticated gaming and simulation modeling, and maybe that’s for the better. So long as they have the ear of the two chief execs who matter.
Glenn
August 20th, 2011
3:32 pm
Yeah, but that’s the Chicago in him. Jacksonianism on Cocaine.
Glenn
August 20th, 2011
4:32 pm
Incidentally I think it’s great that Jim Wooten now can publish the sentence, “It will pass”, as though we were standing with him at a backyard BBQ. Obviously such a conjecture is forbidden reporters and most editors, so nowadays Jim is freer than ever to give us good guidance. That must be a heck of a release for a seasoned hound like him. And we get the principal rewards. Nice.
Not So Casual Observer
August 20th, 2011
5:39 pm
Just as the Federal government’s waste of our tax dollars proves, the broader the base for assessing taxes the more corruption and political ambitions determine the ultimate end. Curtail the increases in government pay, for both elected and non-elected employees, and you will see improvement in the budgeting and allocation process.
We must force government back to a “community service” and end the lifetime benefits of the service. End pensions, convict those such as the Gwinnett County Commissioners who have profited personally from an abundance of tax dollars to allocate and send home all those elected officials who continually are associated with graft and preferences for their “pals”.
Unfortunately, as long as we have a President who sees no evil in spending $50,000+ per week on his vacation during a recession, who spends millions of dollars for vacations for his wife, children and their friends in 5 Star hotels but continually speaks of his concern for those who are suffering financially – we will also have state and local elected officials who see tax dollars as a honey pot for their personal pleasure. Should the President even be on vacation during this period?
This one per cent tax is just another attempt to line their pockets at public expense with beneifts to the taxpayers well below what should result from such a tax.
@@
August 20th, 2011
6:23 pm
Alls I know is the road in front of my house is on the list to be four-laned. Before that happens, I’ll be on the nearest four-lane outta here. People wanna live in and around a metropolis, that’s fine. Count me out. I’ve had enough of elbows and a$$holes.
Glenn
August 20th, 2011
7:07 pm
That’s not all you know, and we all know that much, smart person. For example, please locate the metropolis. I don’t see it. Suburbs with no urb, is what I see. Scattered tall buildings topped with funny hats–a fool’s excuse for noble architecture. Nowhere the sufficiently vibrant density for Atlanta to garner the benefits of a truly urban device. As you say, @@, people prefer the edge, which precisely is where all Hell is breaking loose in land use planning. I live in East Cobb, nearest the border with Fulton, so you can see as I do the funny contrasts, fiscally conservative vs. spendthrift, Republican vs. Democratic, unimaginative vs. progressive–whatever one would say of these amusing differences, but my point is that from any point in Georgia I can walk to the next county within two hours, and I don’t walk fast. So if Cobb and Fulton still can’t let bygones be, then just imagine that dynamic reproduced scores of times across this state of designated Hatfields and prescribed McCoys. The only solution is to do what you and I so dislike: outside muscle. Maybe from the Dome, maybe from DC. I don’t know. The trick is to keep it as indigenous as possible without local corruption.
Hillbilly D
August 20th, 2011
8:11 pm
@@
But there’s no hills in South Alabama. (IW&SH)
@@
August 20th, 2011
11:48 pm
Glenn:
I’m not one to dwell in the slipstream. I NEED room to sprawl.
Hillbilly:
Rolling hills will do just fine. Have no problem with setting my foot on those.
Signed: A recluse on the loose.
(IW&SH)
Glenn
August 21st, 2011
1:23 am
No you really don’t need, @@. Shame. We all can hang close if we feel it through and think about openly. I realize that you and yours want to breathe free, and there’s lots of room to do that, but ultimately everybody shares Atlanta’s predicament. If we can’t aright that canoe then we are perfectly screwed and might as well decamp. Surely you understand, probably better than I. We’re frogs in hot water. It’s a good time to get uppity. Save the Capital, save the State. Reform transportation, save the State. I know that you have your own metaphysics in this regard and I happen to share them, but don’t tell me that you disregard the seriousness of these cries. Not you.
Craig Spinks
August 21st, 2011
3:03 am
Without a safe highway system, Jim, you wouldn’t be able to drive to:
Lang’s Seafood Market/Restaurant overlooking the river in quaint St. Mary’s, GA.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will crush the heads of the perverted New World Order integrationist crowd and their develish black minions
August 21st, 2011
9:47 am
As I gaze over the reputed comments on Jim Wooten’s “Thinking Right”, I am compelled to respond to ‘Glenn’ when taking the Lord’s name in vain.
I am appalled and request banishment from this fine feature in AJC lore.
Let’s all hope ‘Glenn’ has better days elsewhere.
Amen ?
@@
August 21st, 2011
9:55 am
Glenn:
It’s a good time to get uppity.
Howz ’bout I just mail mine in?
Funny thing! I’ve taken up canning…a lost art. I go online to get info regarding “Sure-Jell” as I’m making Pear Ginger Preserves. #1 question online?
“In the event of a drug test, will ‘Sure-Jell’ cover up the tell-tale?” or…
“Will ‘Sure-Jell’ cleanse heroine from your system?’
I just wanted to know how to make jams, jellies & preserves…not how to use drugs and escape the consequences.
Glenn
August 21st, 2011
11:12 am
The market had chicken breasts on sale. T the office that afternoon I Googled recipes for grilling breasts. What I got instead was a bunch of Russian kiddie porn. Sure, you can mail yours in, without any guarantee, though, that it will arrive unscrambled. I see no problem in meeting with politicians. They’re here among us, they have their work cut out for them and generally they welcome input. Some of them are insufferable of course, but by no means are all of them so.
Road Scholar
August 21st, 2011
11:28 am
Rafe : I believe that there is better planning in the Atlanta Metro area due to ARC. They never were treated as a planning partner by GDOT until recently. The list of TSPLOST projects recently approved has very little “fluff” or bad projects. The public has been a problem in support of some projects that were scaled down or never implemented. The NIMBY’s have become BANANA’s (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). It will be interesting how the rail projects get built.
For those who feel the need to bash GDOT examine the facts about their personnel. In the 70’s and 80’s they had 12,000 employees. That was wittled….no, hacked to 6300 employees in the early 2000’s by the use of PRIVATE contractors including consultants, before GDOT accomplished their work with little or no consultants. They now use consultants for 80-90% of there design work, 60% of program management and 80% of maintenance work. Contracting for construction has always been in the 90-95% range. This is called Privatization.They now have approximately 5700 employees and some desire to cut it to 4000. Now, how do the GDOT bashers expect to get the work done?
As a result the level of expertise has decreased at GDOT in all areas. Yes, upon retirement, GDOT retirees go to work for contractors and consultants. Isn’t this a right to work state? Doesn’t the state law prohibit state retirees from woking for the state for more than half time? (The answer is yes). That is if you can get a personal service contract based on the persons expertise and availability of work. Ex commissioner Gena Evans nixed ALL personal services contracts before she was fired.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will crush the heads of the perverted New World Order integrationist crowd and their develish black minions
August 21st, 2011
11:57 am
As I return to the pages Jim Wooten has so graciously provided us, I see ‘Glenn’ has returned and this time toned down his prolific comments as to not take the Lord in vain.
This reclusive move may buy him/her a chance to participate on future topics. Time will tell, but let me make it clear that any future use of the Lord’s name in a non Holy reference will not be tolerated and expulsion will be requested.
Amen ?
Hillbilly D
August 21st, 2011
4:58 pm
“Sure-Jell”
I must be gettin’ old, that’s still parafin wax to me.
Oh, and you could navigate steep hills pretty easy, if you just knew the secret. (IWH)
I see no problem in meeting with politicians.
I’ve done that a time or two but I had to spend about 3 hours in the shower before I felt clean, again. Probably just me but they always seemed bumfuzzled by my questions. Especially, a follow up question to one of their memorized, talking point answers.
Without going into details, I asked one of them one time, “ain’t that a conflict of interest?” and his answer, with a very puzzled look on his face was, “I don’t know.”
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ wilh ads of the perverted New World Order integrationist crowd and their develish black minio
August 21st, 2011
6:28 pm
Enter your comments here
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will crush the heads of the perverted New World Order integrationist crowd and their devilish black minions
August 21st, 2011
6:31 pm
.
himey
August 21st, 2011
7:41 pm
I also think Glenn needs to be removed if he (?) uses the lords name in vain. No place for it hear.
Glenn
August 22nd, 2011
11:51 pm
Road Collar, Georgia Boot, as you know and can see I’m the last to drag down GDOT rather than th defend the Departments sophistication, planning, openness and wisdom over against revolving political potentates almost none of whom could have reigned for his nanosecond without proving complete contempt for anything like sound transportation policy interfering with frontier profit at the expense, alternately, of the powerless Wrong People and the politically somnulant Right People with more Money than Brains. Just so long as money is being made by the political class, that lovely knowing class of ladies and gents of Georgia…
carlosgvv
August 23rd, 2011
11:22 am
“Inventive minds can certainly devise a reasonably fair funding system”
And you may be certain that politically inventive minds will find ways to divert transit and road imporvement tax funds to personal pork projects and/or their pockets.
Glenn
August 23rd, 2011
10:34 pm
…precisely, but not any time soon. Plenty of time for counterfoil politics.
Mr. Thomas Anthony Jones, Sr
August 24th, 2011
6:42 am
Mr. Wooten overlooks the needs of the citizens in the state of Georgia who do not have cars! Senior citizens, working class people, and the disabled need transportation also. Conservatives only were about themselves when others are desperate for help. Mr. Wooten forgets that senior citizens, the working class, and the diabled pay taxes also. Republicans always forgat that seniors, the working class, and seniors pay taxes.We want to receive services for our tax money.
Seniors, the working class, andthe disabled demand that our needs be serviced by the government. We demand excellant transit service and we demand it now.The people demand that our needs be met by a government that takes our money. Clayton County had no business cutting bus service and Cobb County had no business cutting our paratransit services.Politicians who do not give us our transit and paratransit services will find themselves in the unemployment line collecting their unemployment checks. Mr. Wooten needs to walk in our shoes sometmes. Be good for his soul.
Yep
August 24th, 2011
11:22 am
I will vote against the transportation sales tax for a couple of reasons.
1. I am taxed enough already with 3 new SPLOSTS in Forsyth County in the past 18 months alone. Unless I can figure out how to buy EVERYTHING online and avoid sales taxes, my effective tax rate at a retail outlet is 9% already! Do not want to go up to 10%.
2. I moved as far from the city as possible to avoid crime, corruption, etc. Do I want to make it easier for someone in Clayton County to ride public transit to invade my home, absolutely not.
3. The heavy traffic, while onerous at times, acts as a barrier that will protect my family from the nastiness of the big city somewhat and allow me to rest comfortably at night.
Did I say that I was taxed enough already?
Glenn
August 24th, 2011
4:24 pm
You still could have both. Both traffic flow in and around Downtown together with preservation of the flight mentality that dictates untamelled sprawl outside Atlanta’s more recent, concentric parapets. YOU could conjure this; I am disqualified except in knowing (a) that it can be done and (b) in concluding that it needn’t and shouldn’t be. No great need to turn back the clock to the Gingrich period in-state. Like thousands of others, when I look at ancient maps and modern ssttelite views it’s apparent that there are about five templates for great cities: religious cities, trading cities, fortess cities, transportation cities, one or two hybrid forms. It’s obvious that modern Atlanta was rebuilt on the design of a fortress city with concentric moats, except with the elites lying centrifigal rather than central. An encapture, then. With the exception of Philadelphia, this is a new twist that contorts our movements gymnastically, wastefully, destructively. As the senior Mr. Jones points out, gymnastic capacity is an unjust test of tax-paid service. Very skilled transportation planners can sort out these tensions. Unless I miss my bet some of them already have done. So I don’t want to vote on the basis of an onramp here, a MARTA station there. The whole transportation map of Metro Atlanta should begin to change infrastructurally, with respect to the region’s authentic parts.
Craig Spinks/ Augusta
August 25th, 2011
2:35 pm
Lang’s Seafood Market/Restaurant
River St.
St. Mary’s, GA
Glenn
August 25th, 2011
5:56 pm
Thanks for the advise as to good food and grub. And thanks for explaining a little bit of where the rbber hits road in this state. Honestly I thought it ballsy of Mr. Wooten to address the subject, as he must know so distractingly how it skews most aspects of real, down politics in this state. But then, come to think of it, he didn’t so much address it as he did completely flack for the Governor’s plank. Golly gosh!