Politics, paltry funding wreck transportation
By Jay Bookman
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
November 20, 2008
Georgia’s transportation system, once the state’s chief competitive advantage over its Sun Belt neighbors, has been in a long decline traceable to two big mistakes:
First, we have spent far too little money to keep pace with our neighbors or even our own needs. The bold willingness to invest in our future shown by earlier generations — a trait that gave us the world’s busiest airport, an extensive interstate system and, reaching back to the 19th century, a state-subsidized rail network — has been replaced by a mindset that sees government investment as folly.
Second, what little money we did spend over the past several decades has been spent foolishly, allocated not by need or potential impact but by political influence.
The first point — the decline in spending — is all too easily documented. According to the Fiscal Research Center at Georgia State University, Georgia spent $196 per person on highways in 2005, less than half what competitor states such as Florida, North Carolina and Virginia spent.
Between 2000 and 2005, Georgia’s spending on highways declined by 14.4 percent when adjusted for inflation. By comparison, spending rose in Florida by 60.7 percent; by 60.6 percent in South Carolina; and by 37.4 percent in Texas.
Such comparisons would appear even worse if they included spending on transit, because Georgia spends almost nothing on that mode of travel. MARTA, for example, is the only major rail transit system that receives no operating funds from state government.
Overall, according to the state Department of Transportation, Georgia ranks 49th in transportation spending as a percentage of state gross domestic product. In a fast-growing state, and in an era of increasing globalization in which the free flow of goods and people is absolutely key, disinvestment on such a scale will of course have consequences.
At a micro level, you experience those consequences when it takes an hour to make a 15-minute trip. At a macro level, congestion costs metro Atlanta close to $3 billion a year in lost productivity, and state and regional economic development experts report that congestion is discouraging business leaders from locating or expanding here.
Compounding the problem, most state and federal funding is funneled through the state Department of Transportation, a dysfunctional agency that traditionally parcels out money on the basis of political influence not transportation need.
In fact, Georgians outraged by the billions of dollars wasted by earmarking in Congress would be appalled to learn that the process is far more institutionalized and extensive here at home than it is in Washington.
In part, that’s because state law requires that transportation money be spent equally in Georgia’s 13 congressional districts, even though needs are not allocated equally. In addition, money isn’t allocated to projects based on formal assessments of where it will do the most good, but on where it will curry the most favor with legislators, the 13 members of the state Transportation Board and with highway contractors.
In fact, when severe spending cutbacks were announced recently, several board members seemed more concerned about the impact of the cuts on their friends in the contracting industry than on taxpayers, commuters or state employees. That system is indefensible, and while DOT board members and legislators claim to acknowledge change is needed, many of them don’t really mean it.
For example, DOT Commissioner Gena Evans is trying to adopt a more businesslike approach to fund projects based on actual need. But the board to which she reports may decide to weaken the proposed formula to give equal weight to non-technical factors —- in other words, to politics.
“If I have a dollar in tax money, I would have to spend 50 cents of it for politics and only 50 cents for transportation,” Evans said Tuesday. “I’m a taxpayer. And as a taxpayer, I don’t like that.”
As taxpayers and as travelers, none of us should.
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