The 29.2-cent-per-gallon fuel excise tax proposed in the House transportation bill will likely have a tougher time winning Senate approval.
The more conservative Senate appears to be drawing a harder line against the 29.2-cent figure, which the House preserved last week before approving the entire bill by a surprisingly comfortable margin.
Sen. Joshua McKoon, R-Columbus, told InsiderAdvantage Georgia Monday that while he had not yet read the bill, “I’m skeptical about anything that raises taxes.”
Opponents say House Bill 170 as currently written would increase taxes to raise nearly $1 billion a year more for transportation. The House rejected an amendment by House Majority Leader Larry O’Neal, R-Bonaire, and Majority Whip Matt Ramsey, R-Peachtree City, to lower the excise tax to 24 cents, which they said would make the bill more revenue-neutral.
With the Republican majority split, strong Democratic support led to the bill’s passage, cemented by a promise by Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry that the DOT would begin a “disparity study” that could lead to a state program for minority contractors.
Democratic support for the bill looks less certain in the Senate. Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, appeared before the entire chamber Monday to blast the McMurry letter as insufficient. “After 100 years of discrimination, I want to see more than a letter,” Fort said. “I want to see goals.” Instead of a letter, he said, “do the right thing about minority business.”
Fort said that 2.7 percent of DOT projects are now awarded to minorities. According to the DOT, all “disadvantaged business enterprise” work involves federal funds, and Georgia has no separate program.
When asked if Senate Democrats will support the bill as strongly as their House counterparts, Fort told InsiderAdvantage Georgia, “I think not, we’ll have to see.” He said the bill is “deeply flawed. It shifts the costs off to the locals, and there’s a lack of a real minority participation program.”
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle on Monday assigned the bill to the Senate Transportation Committee, chaired by Sen. Tommie Williams, R-Lyons, although some speculated it might go to the Finance Committee.
Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, the Senate majority whip and co-chairman of the special transportation study committee, said he expects the Senate committee to hold its first hearing on HB 170 next week.
“There’s a lot of good parts in the bill,” Gooch told InsiderAdvantage Georgia.”There’s some issues in there I think that the Senate is going to want to discuss and look at closely.”
He said that he believes that the Senate version eventually will draw support from both parties. “I think we can put together a a good bill that the Republican caucus can support and also the Democrats. I don’t see why we can’t do something that’s bipartisan. We all know there’s a need for infrastructure investment, and I think this is something that both the Democrats and the Republicans should be able to agree on.”
Sen. Hunter Hill R-Smyrna, told InsiderAdvantage about the bill’s Senate prospects, “I think there’s going to be a lot of support for it, but I also think there’s going to be a lot of changes.”
Hill added, “There’s a lot of good ideas in terms of prioritizing money we already have in the budget. Currently, transportation is 4 percent of the budget, and there’s a strong appetite to make transportation a higher percentage of the the budget than it currently is…. people want to see us prioritize transportation with monies that we have before we consider raising taxes. That’s a just a legitimate issue that I’m personally sensitive on as well.”
He said “I’ll reserve my comments on how I’m going to vote on the bill” until the final Senate version. but “I support funding transportation at a higher rate.”
In the House, Rep. Keisha Waites, D-Atlanta, sought to amend the bill to require the DOT to do the “disparity study,” but the amendment did not receive a House Transportation Committee vote after McMurry delivered his letter.
Kimberly King, DOT director of equal employment opportunity, told InsiderAdvantage that the federal government requires a disparity study every three years. The state would have to carry out a separate study before starting its own minority program, she said.
Without the study, a state program could be “challenged on constitutional grounds,” she said.
