The Georgia legislature started its 2015 session last week, a frenzied 40 days to accomplish a year's worth of work. Naturally, with so little time, certain priorities take focus. The top of the Georgia Republican agenda is clear: look good for their corporate sponsors basic road maintenance. Republican dominance of the state for over a decade has created a huge backlog of projects for the state DoT. State roads are on schedule for repaving only once every fifty years.
Failing to provide basic public services doesn't bother Georgia Republicans - that's their creed, after all - but it does bother their large corporate donors. Businesses need transportation infrastructure to get customers in the door, attract employees, and deliver goods and services. Georgia's business community is only conservative until it hurts the bottom line (see Coca-Cola's response to the "religious liberty" bill). So when Georgia's business community says to build some roads, the Georgia GOP has to find some way.
As you may know, Georgia Republicans have already tried to address this problem. But when TSPLOST failed (a Byzantine Balkanization of state transportation planning and funding), they were forced back to the drawing board. While they're remaining tight lipped, the fix is in. Republicans are once again finding a way to hit the poor, for the benefit of their wealthy benefactors.
As a prelude to the legislative session, the Republicans created a "Joint Study Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Funding." To great fanfare , they released a report! A weighty 23 pages, counting the table of contents and signature pages, it has sections helpfully titled "Statement of Need" and "Magnitude of the Problem." And what a problem! I previously mentioned our 50-year repaving schedule. The report also states that to merely preserve the current system, Georgia needs to spend an additional $1.0-$1.5 billion annually. Multi-modal transportation costs even more, and for the "full universe" of transit needs, including passenger rail systems (naturally the last priority), Georgia would need to raise and spend between $3.9-$5.4 billion a year.
But I'm skipping ahead a bit. If the earlier sections are the wind-up, "Essential to Jobs in Georgia" is the pitch.
Left unaddressed, these challenges will continue to mount in states like Georgia that are expected to experience both short-term and long-term population growth and expanding economic development opportunities in urban and rural areas. Georgia’s highway system may also face a set of unique challenges, arising from the sustained population growth of the Atlanta metro region, long-term growth of regional manufacturing industries, and the expected growth of commercial freight traffic moving through the region following the deepening of the Port of Savannah.
More State-level Investment in Transportation is Needed
Investment in transportation infrastructure must be viewed in its larger economic context. Roads, bridges, transit systems and rail lines are critical means of connecting businesses with their customers and employees. However, congestion on major highways costs the state billions each year in lost productivity, including extended commutes and delayed shipments of goods. These problems are only expected to grow as the United States, and fast-growing states like Georgia particularly, continue to experience rapid population growth, increased use of freight and shipping lanes, and urban areas become more congested.
In order to remain nationally and globally competitive, and to meet these challenges, Georgia must take immediate and significant steps to increase its investment in transportation infrastructure.
Did you catch that? The big problem we face isn't that Georgians are wasting away their lives stuck on an outmoded, underfunded, overwhelmed transportation network. Heck, Georgians only make it into the pitch as part of the scourge of rising population growth, or as an explanation for "lost productivity." Hold onto this for later: the state of Georgia isn't building roads for its people, but for its industries, freight, and businesses.
The tough question - how to pay for these improvements - is side-stepped. Rather than making specific recommendations, the Report offers an a la carte menu of possibilities. Some of the recommendations wouldn't impact revenue at all, but are accounting measures (while they might raise funding in one department, they would create holes in others).
The Report has a few recommendations concerning our gas tax. First, they want to convert our fuel tax from a percentage to a set excise amount. That sets up another recommendation, indexing the gas tax to inflation (permanent future tax increases from the same people who just constitutionally capped the income tax). And it ties into a third recommendation, an immediate ten cent raise in the gas tax. Why? "Taxes on motor fuel are widely accepted and acknowledged to be “user fees,” and are therefore the most fair and direct way for users to pay for roads and bridges."
The Report also proposes a statewide 1% sales tax, which the General Assembly in its wisdom could apportion to the DoT as it saw fit. New tolls lanes and whacking people with electric vehicles with a new fee.
Let's circle back to those user fees. Who's really a user - the average commuter? Georgians stuck on today's roads don't have much of an option in their transit choices. Calling us "users" and sticking us with the bill is a bit like charging prisoners rent for using cell space.
The real users here are the the wealthy businesses and individuals who are getting a windfall benefit from the state for a transportation network they don't support. The Joint Committee Report even admits as such - the entire pitch is to help the businesses, freight, and industry of Georgia. By any fair measure, THOSE are the users of the state transportation network. By any fair standard, the people and businesses who reap the benefit of the investment ought to contribute the capital. The most direct way to pay is to use the most fair tax system we've yet devised - the progressive individual and corporate income tax.
And just like a sales tax, the gas tax is extremely regressive - hitting the poor and middle class far harder than it does the people with the fattest pocketbooks.
Republicans are already paving the way to flatten Georgian taxpayers. A stalking horse proposal was made to dramatically increase the gas tax, while lowering the state income tax. Crazy, yes, but crazy like a fox. Republicans in Georgia are out there right now making their case. It's time to fight back.