The transportation spending bill passed by the Legislature last week will take care of Georgia’s road needs for the near future, the legislation’s main architect says.
“For the next 10 to 15 years, we’re going to be in pretty good shape,” House Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Roberts, R-Ocilla, told InsiderAdvantage Georgia.
While House Bill 170 will raise about an additional $900 million a year instead of the $1 billion frequently cited as the minimum needed for adequate road and bridge maintenance, Roberts hailed the legislation as a major step.
“It’s the culmination of a long-term deal,” Roberts said in a brief interview with InsiderAdvantage Georgia on the session’s hectic last day. “It’s taken us about a year and a half now. To put this together, a lot of people have worked really hard. There’s been a lot of compromise. I think now we have a sense of accomplishment as a whole that we can move the state forward with transportation and have a reliable, sustainable source of funding.”
The final bill passed by the Legislature last week is a compromise between Roberts’ bill approved by the House and a Senate version. A conference committee after several days of intense negotiations agreed on a 26-cent-per-gallon fuel excise tax, 29 cents on diesel, which will be collected beginning July 1. The excise tax will be indexed to according to inflation and changes in fuel efficiency standards. Gov. Nathan Deal said last week that he will sign the legislation.
The conference committee compromise passed by the Legislature near midnight on the session’s second to last day also imposes a $5 fee on hotel and motel guests and fees on heavy trucks and buses. It also removes the tax credit for electric cars and adds fees for alternative fuel vehicles.
In regard to the hotel/motel fee revenues, Roberts said, “We actually could see it tick on up, depending on the number of hotel/motel rooms.” He said that the conference committee based its projections on 168,000 rooms in the state, but that number will rise as new hotels are constructed.
The legislation calls for the hotel/motel and truck fees to be used for transportation, but they are not dedicated to that purpose. If the Legislature does not spend the money for transportation, the fees can be reduced by 50 percent in the first fiscal year, and eliminated totally the second.
“We put language in there to put our money where our mouth is, and say if we don’t spend it for transportation, then it ceases to be levied,” Roberts said.
While the legislation has been criticized for not devoting funds to mass transit, Roberts pointed out that the motel/hotel and truck fees sections include a broad definition of the term “transportation purposes” for which the revenues can be spent, including public transit, rails and buses.
A separate section of the legislation allows counties and cities served by GRTA or MARTA to enter agreements for transportation projects, including mass transit and rail. Two or three counties in the area could immediately call for a T-SPLOST election. Local governments could also impose sales taxes of half a percent.
The bill points to what likely will emerge as a major issue of the 2016 legislative session: state tax reform. The legislation calls for the creation of a “Special Joint Committee on Georgia Revenue Structure,” which is mandated to develop tax reform legislation next year.
That legislation could include a proposal introduced this session by Rep. John Carson, R-Marietta, to reduce the state income tax and raise the state sales tax, including placing the sales tax on grocery sales. Carson introduced the bill at a well-publicized press conference early this session also attended by House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, but the legislation never received a committee hearing.
With Democratic support needed to pass the transportation spending bill and Deal’s Opportunity School District legislation, the House leadership decided not to move ahead with the contentious issue of placing a sales tax on food. Next year will be different.
