ROME — The hard part now begins for lawmakers and others who have spent the past four months studying ways to find an extra $1 billion or more each year to pay for Georgia’s growing transportation infrastructure needs.
The panel has traveled the state, holding eight public hearings, but now it must actually produce a set of recommendations that leaders of the House and Senate have promised will be “significant” and “bold.” Legislation that created the Joint Study Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Funding set a Nov. 30 deadline for the panel to submit recommendations to the General Assembly.
While there were few clues given at Thursday’s final committee meeting, panelists heard a variety of concerns and suggestions, especially about the growing impact that hybrid and electric vehicles have on the state’s bottom line. The more fuel-efficient the car, the less gasoline is purchased. The less gasoline purchased means the less collected in gas taxes for transportation projects.
“All of these new types of vehicles are coming on the market, and we as a state and a country are offering tax incentives for people to buy them on one hand,” Rome City Commissioner Buzz Wachsteter said. “But on the other hand, what are we doing? We’re taking away the revenue that was being produced by conventional vehicles that use motor fuel to provide revenue.”
Panelists appeared particularly interested Thursday in a presentation from Virginia transportation executive Nick Donahue, who detailed how his state paid for $1.9 billion in improvements to the Beltway around Washington. Through aggressive bond sales to public-private partnerships that left private firms in charge of toll collection, Virginia added two extra toll lanes going each way on I-495 around the nation’s capital, Donahue said.
via Final transportation committee meeting yields few new clues | www.myajc.com.
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