Georgia
Senate looking to revisit TSPLOST, Mar 18, 2015, Jacques Couret, Dave Williams Atlanta Business Chronicle
Georgia Senate
leaders are pushing a plan to revisit the regional transportation sales tax
votes that failed three years ago in most of Georgia, including metro Atlanta.
Legislation
approved by the Senate Transportation Committee Wednesday would give local
elected officials in the regions where voters rejected the TSPLOST in 2012
until January 2017 to schedule a new referendum on a 1-cent sales tax increase
to pay for transportation projects inside those regions. The tax would be collected
over 10 years.
In regions that
don't take the state up on that option, smaller groups of counties would be
free to band together to offer voters a sales hike of up to a penny that would
run for five years. The 2012 TSPLOSTs did not offer such a fractional sales tax
increase.
The bill the
committee voted on Wednesday is separate from comprehensive transportation
funding legislation the same panel approved on Tuesday, a measure aimed at
raising about $1 billion a year for transportation improvements across Georgia
that has received extensive debate during this year's General Assembly session.
"Most of
the money [from the transportation funding bill] will be spent on state roads
and bridges," said Sen. Tommie Williams, R-Lyons, the committee's chairman.
"[The new TSPLOST bill] would let the locals raise a good deal of money
for their own projects ... and is the only way we can raise money for
transit."
The Senate committee's
version of the transportation funding bill calls for an excise tax on gasoline
of 24 cents per gallon, down from the 29.2 cents-a-gallon rate set in
legislation the state House of Representatives passed early this month.
To make up the
revenue that would be lost by a lower excise tax, the Senate bill would impose
an annual highway user fee of $25 a year on all cars registered in Georgia, $50
on trucks and $10 on motorcycles. It also would slap a daily fee of $5 on
rental cars.
Both the House
and Senate transportation funding bills would go after electric vehicles by
imposing an annual fee of $200 on non-commercial EVs and eliminating a $5,000
state tax credit on leases and purchases of electric vehicles.
The Senate bill
would allow local governments to collect sales taxes on gasoline priced at up
to $3.39 a gallon but not beyond.
"We don't want to have the highest gas prices in the Southeast,"
Williams said.The full Senate is expected to take up the transportation funding bill on Friday.
Dave Williams covers
Government
Comments
Repeal Regionalism. We don’t want unelected, appointed
regional governance at all. Just repeal
HB 277 and HB 1216. Dissolve all regional offices and put that money into more
concrete lanes to fix the congestion on interstate highways. $1 billion going
to “state roads and bridges” doesn’t do it.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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