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| Unless you have a burning interest in state level transportation policy politics. |
There is a very important vote coming up soon.
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| No, not this one. |
I think we can all agree that traffic in Atlanta sucks.
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| This is a good day. |
How does it suck? Let me count the ways. MARTA is inefficient and bleeding money. Narrow streets are riddled with cracks and potholes. There aren't enough sidewalks. Generally, it makes living and working in Atlanta a massive pain and is apparently scaring away jobs.
T-SPLOST is the proposed solution. It's a referendum that would add a 1% sales tax for the next ten years in order to pay for improving the whole transportation situation. The vote is on July 31st and it's very important that you vote.
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| I can't think of a caption good enough for this photo. |
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T-SPLOST stands for Transportation - Special-purpose local-option sales tax. It's a Georgia thing.
See, the base sales tax for the entire state of Georgia is 4%. A SPLOST allows individual areas to raise the rate in order to pay for things like roads, parks, and schools. It's the reason why I pay 6% at home in Gwinnett County and 7% when I'm at school in Athens (which I always manage to forget about for some reason).
There are conditions with any SPLOST. Georgia has a maximum sales tax rate of 8%, so I guess an area can only have 4 going at one time. They're written with expiration dates and if the money is raised faster than expected, it goes away early. Theoretically, it prevents abuse of the funds.
Okay, so back to the upcoming vote on the T-SPLOST. If it is approved, then it would raise something like $800 million dollars to be invested into improving Atlanta roads and transportation. That's a lot of money. So much money that part of this proposal was for each county to submit a theoretical project list of what they might do with the money. Those fine 192 pages can be found right here.
Supporters claim that this will shorten commute times, reduce traffic accidents, draw more jobs to the area, and increase quality of life for everyone in the area. I certainly support repaving parts of 316 that I get to bounce over on my way to school.
People are against the SPLOST for a lot of different reasons. Some people don't like the increased tax burden. Some people don't like what's on or not on the project list. A lot of people just don't trust state DOT after that whole 400- toll debacle.
For those of you who care, that went something like this:
GDOT in 1991: Hey, we need to widen state route 400 but it's going to cost a shit-ton of money. What do you guys think about a toll so that we can pay for it more responsibly?
People: *grumblegrumble taxes suck grumblegrumble* How much and how long?
GDOT in 1991: Eh, why don't we say 50 cents a car for 20 years? That should cover it. Then, we'll take down the toll booths and the road will be free.
People: Fine.
Channel 2 News in 2009: So we did some digging and we noticed that the tolls on 400 have collected more than enough money to pay for the road. Those tolls should have been taken down years ago.
GDOT in 2009: Uh, yeah, good catch. You see the thing is, we payed using a structured loan that doesn't allow us to pay it off faster. We have to keep them up until 2011 even though that's going to cost more.
People: ಠ_ಠ
People in 2011: Okay, time for those tolls to come down
Sonny Perdue and State Toll and Roadway Authority: Yeah, about that. These tolls make a lot of money and we don't really want to get rid of them. So we voted to keep them up until 2020. But its okay because the money is going towards more highway projects.
People: What th-how can you- IS THIS EVEN LEGAL?
Sonny Perdue and State Toll and Roadway Authority: Yep. On another note, have you heard of this great thing call Peach Pass?
People: ಠ_ಠ
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| Actually Georgia is the No. 3 peach producer. |
See, the base sales tax for the entire state of Georgia is 4%. A SPLOST allows individual areas to raise the rate in order to pay for things like roads, parks, and schools. It's the reason why I pay 6% at home in Gwinnett County and 7% when I'm at school in Athens (which I always manage to forget about for some reason).
There are conditions with any SPLOST. Georgia has a maximum sales tax rate of 8%, so I guess an area can only have 4 going at one time. They're written with expiration dates and if the money is raised faster than expected, it goes away early. Theoretically, it prevents abuse of the funds.
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| All we can do is try! |
Okay, so back to the upcoming vote on the T-SPLOST. If it is approved, then it would raise something like $800 million dollars to be invested into improving Atlanta roads and transportation. That's a lot of money. So much money that part of this proposal was for each county to submit a theoretical project list of what they might do with the money. Those fine 192 pages can be found right here.
Supporters claim that this will shorten commute times, reduce traffic accidents, draw more jobs to the area, and increase quality of life for everyone in the area. I certainly support repaving parts of 316 that I get to bounce over on my way to school.
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| Then again, it could always be worse. |
People are against the SPLOST for a lot of different reasons. Some people don't like the increased tax burden. Some people don't like what's on or not on the project list. A lot of people just don't trust state DOT after that whole 400- toll debacle.
For those of you who care, that went something like this:
GDOT in 1991: Hey, we need to widen state route 400 but it's going to cost a shit-ton of money. What do you guys think about a toll so that we can pay for it more responsibly?
People: *grumblegrumble taxes suck grumblegrumble* How much and how long?
GDOT in 1991: Eh, why don't we say 50 cents a car for 20 years? That should cover it. Then, we'll take down the toll booths and the road will be free.
People: Fine.
Channel 2 News in 2009: So we did some digging and we noticed that the tolls on 400 have collected more than enough money to pay for the road. Those tolls should have been taken down years ago.
GDOT in 2009: Uh, yeah, good catch. You see the thing is, we payed using a structured loan that doesn't allow us to pay it off faster. We have to keep them up until 2011 even though that's going to cost more.
People: ಠ_ಠ
People in 2011: Okay, time for those tolls to come down
Sonny Perdue and State Toll and Roadway Authority: Yeah, about that. These tolls make a lot of money and we don't really want to get rid of them. So we voted to keep them up until 2020. But its okay because the money is going towards more highway projects.
People: What th-how can you- IS THIS EVEN LEGAL?
Sonny Perdue and State Toll and Roadway Authority: Yep. On another note, have you heard of this great thing call Peach Pass?
People: ಠ_ಠ
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| Is it just me or does that sound like a threat? |
Nathan Deal in 2012: Hey, so remember when this last governor refused to take down the tolls on 400? That guy sucked. I'm not that guy. Instead I'm going to take down the tolls (in 2013). Isn't that awesome?
People: You want to be re-elected don't you?
Nathan Deal in 2012: Pretty much.
People: You want to be re-elected don't you?
Nathan Deal in 2012: Pretty much.
Okay, I hope that was an amusing look a some transportation political history.
By the way, I hope I haven't given the impression that I'm urging everyone to vote 'YES.' I don't even know how I'm going to vote yet. The most important issue here is to become educated on the issue, form an opinion, and then vote. I'd suggest the AJC coverage page as a good starting point. Off course, you can Google and find dozens of groups devoted to this issue.
If you don't vote because you're not registered, please register right away. There's an important election coming up.
Yes, that one.
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| Well |
By the way, I hope I haven't given the impression that I'm urging everyone to vote 'YES.' I don't even know how I'm going to vote yet. The most important issue here is to become educated on the issue, form an opinion, and then vote. I'd suggest the AJC coverage page as a good starting point. Off course, you can Google and find dozens of groups devoted to this issue.
If you don't vote because you're not registered, please register right away. There's an important election coming up.
Yes, that one.
Well done. Light-hearted and informative!
ReplyDeleteThe sales tax will bring in $6.1 billion, not $800 million. In addition to the $850 million in expected federal matching funds and $110 million kicked in by local authorities, the total project funding is ~$7.1 billion over ten years.
ReplyDeleteOkay, thank you for the correction.
Delete