Week 5 Legislative Update

Week Five – Feb 10

Legislation to repeal and replace TIA introduced

Rep. Setzler (R-Cobb County) and two co-sponsors, introduced legislation this week to repeal the requirements of the existing Transportation Investment Act (TIA).

The legislation, HB 938 and HR 1350, repeals the existing TIA law and calls for an amendment to the Georgia Constitution that establishes, among other things, a process where two or more counties can levy a sales tax for transportation purposes.  The legislation also restricts MARTA from using any special district sales tax receipts for maintenance and operations.

During December’s joint RBC, Association County Commissioners of Georgia and Georgia Municipal Association TIA seminar, House Speaker David Ralston indicated that too much work had gone into the adoption of project lists statewide and that, except for possibly some technical changes to the law, he felt strongly it was now up to the voters to decide whether to approve their regions transportation improvement sales tax. The TIA project lists were adopted unanimously in almost all twelve regions.

Legislative rules require two-thirds of the House (120 votes) and two-thirds of the Senate (37 votes) to pass legislation to amend the Georgia Constitution.

Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle Meets with RBC Board of Directors

Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle met with the RBC Board of Directors during our February Board of Directors meeting this week at the Capitol. Lieutenant Governor Cagle shared his thoughts on transportation funding and the need to look for alternative sources of funding and methods for providing transportation options to all Georgians.

Lt. Governor Cagle was asked if he believed the sales tax exemption for energy used in manufacturing would pass this session.  The lt. governor stated Georgia needed to be competitive with our neighboring states for manufacturing jobs and all our neighbor states already exempted manufacturing from the sales tax on energy.  He also said that the exemption needed to be on all sales taxes, both state and local.  However, he further said there needed to be some mechanism to keep local schools and other local services from being negatively impacted by the reduction in sales tax receipts.

When asked about water resources for the metro Atlanta region, he stated Lake Lanier wasn’t sufficient to meet the future needs of a growing Atlanta region and that additional reservoirs needed to be built and the region needed to continue its water conservation efforts.

On the issue of transit governance, the lieutenant governor believes it must be addressed.  However, he believes it will take at least one more year to consider all the issues related to transit governance.

Transit governance is an issue that not only impacts the metro Atlanta region, but almost every county statewide. There are over 100 transit service providers throughout Georgia.  Transit services are provided in every state Senate district and in 174 of Georgia’s 180 House districts.

House Passes Amended Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 Budget

The House passed the amended FY 2012 budget this week and sent it to the Senate for consideration.  The House Appropriations Committee now begins work in earnest on the proposed FY 2013 budget which runs July 1, 2012 – June 30, 2013.

The governor’s proposed FY13 budget is $39 billion, of which $19 billion come from state funds.  Some of the largest expenditures will go for GDOT ($2B total, $783M state), Community Health ($12B total, $3B state), and the Board of Regents ($6B total, $2B state).  Debt service is estimated to remain at approximately 7% of the prior years net treasury receipts.

This Week’s Legislative Calendar

The Georgia General Assembly has completed eighteen legislative days.  Twenty two legislative days remain in the 2012 legislative session.  This week the legislature will pass its half way point.  This week’s legislative days will be Wednesday February 15th (19^th legislative day), Thursday (20^th) and Friday February 17, 2012 (21^st legislative day).