Editor's note: The following is an opinion piece from a Local Voices blogger and does not necessarily reflect the views of Patch.
Transportation Leadership Coalition Calls for Removal of Penalty in TIA / T-SPLOST
Penalty for voting “no” potentially adds hundreds of millions of dollars of expense to already cash-strapped local governments’ transportation funding.
The voters have spoken and T-SPLOST is defeated. Unfortunately, the issues within the Transportation Investment Act of 2010 linger. Lawmakers had the temerity to build in two (2) penalties clauses in House Bill 277 (HB277), "Transportation Investment Act of 2010" (TIA / T-SPLOST).
The first penalty was threatened before the referendum was placed on the ballot. If local election officials did not place the referendum on the ballot, the community would suffer a 30 percent (30%) penalty in funding for local transportation projects. GDOT funding the county residents have already paid for in taxes.
Now that T-SPLOST is defeated, the second penalty kicks in. The law stipulates that if the referendum is voted it down, as it was in 9 of the 12 regions, those 9 regions now suffer a GDOT funding penalty.
“The coercive nature of this law is unthinkable. Our state leaders should not hold our own fuel taxes hostage because ‘the people’ voted down a bad referendum. Nor should they incentivize voting for a terrible bill,” said Steve Brown of the Transportation Leadership Coalition and Fayette County Commissioner. “One penalty clause is bad enough, but two penalty clauses in legislation proves a sheer lack of faith in their own plan.”
The law reads as follows starting on line 687:
“(d) In the event a special district sales and use tax election is held and the voters in a special district do not approve the levy of the special district transportation sales and use tax, the local governments in such special district shall be required to provide a 30 percent match for any local maintenance and improvement grants by the Department of Transportation for transportation projects and programs for at least 24 months and until such time as a special district sales and use tax is approved.
“In the event the voters in a special district approve the levy of the special district transportation sales and use tax, the local governments in such special district shall be required to provide a 10 percent match for any local maintenance and improvement grants by the Department of Transportation for transportation projects and programs for the duration of the levy of the special district transportation sales and use tax.”
“We need strong leadership under the Gold Dome with the fortitude to repeal this terrible law and replace it with a plan that uses common sense,” said Jack Staver, chairman, Transportation Leadership Coalition. “This is certainly not any democratic principle that I believe in. Voting your conscience should not come with any penalty.”
The Transportation Leadership Coalition calls on Governor Deal and the State legislature to not only revoke the penalty, but also repeal HB 277 in its entirety.
About Transportation Leadership Coalition, LLC
Transportation Leadership Coalition, LLC, is a grassroots, all-volunteer organization that has come together in the belief that the State of Georgia can do a much better job of transportation planning than passing the largest tax increase in Georgia history and spending the money on politically-favored rail projects, trapping us into a tax situation that will continue forever. We believe that if Georgians understand the facts about the project list and the proposed management of the funds and projects, they will overwhelmingly reject it.
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August 3, 2012 By DTV Admin Leave a Comment VoterGa Supporters, If you clicked on the election reporting link on your county web site, you may have noticed that your county is one that now has a new election reporting page. That is because Secretary of State Brian Kemp has purchased a new Election Night Reporting System (ENR) system even though he has said there was not enough money to buy cost effective auditable voting equipment. This reporting system purchase was mentioned by several south Georgia media outlets on July 26 just five days before the election and I have found no mention of it on the Secretary of State web site since. We discovered it when a local TV station complained that county election results were no longer accessible for reporting. The system that was purchased is of special concern because it is the notorious SOE software from Tampa, Florida based, Clarity Elections, a subsidiary of Spanish owned SCTYL. This system introduces a new vulnerability into the elections reporting process by expecting counties to upload votes directly to SOE servers in Florida before the counties have produced their own election reports. The counties then link their election reporting web page to the Florida servers to produce election results throughout Election Night. This procedure opens the door for remote tampering of county results.
1.First, the new page is branded to look like the Secretary of State’s web page but if you notice the URL in the web address bar you can see that the page is served from Clarity Elections not the Secretary of State, 2.Second, I confirmed with a county office that the results are uploaded directly to Clarity Elections for reporting purposes, not the office of the Secretary of State. 3.Third, the direct upload procedure is consistent with the way that other states or jurisdictions use the Clarity Elections SOE software. 4.Fourth, results are uploaded many times during the night to report interim results, not just once at the end of the evening. 5.Fifth, it is not practical for a flash drive to be used repeatedly to upload interim results but even if it were, external tampering routines could be introduced when the drive is reused after the initial upload. To combat this new threat I recommended that candidates or other parties concerned with a specific referendum: 1.Have representatives present as observers at selected precincts just before 7pm when the polls close. 2.Record or photograph the total precinct result tape for selected races. 3.Verify that the totals recorded from the precincts and counties are incorporated correctly into the totals on the county web site.
Garland Favorito VoterGA.org
Everyone wants their cake and to eat it too. You can't have both. Now, only the road projects that are really necessary will get funding and the DOT may be able to save up some fund for transit.
No wonder so many people down here seem to mistrust it!
* Local governments are forced to prioritize their projects by putting their own funds behind it. This also gives them more local control over what gets done. Perhaps that pet road project just wasn't as important as everyone says it was, but something else was. Now when the local government puts their money behind the other project, it's clear what was more important. * Stretches the state's funds further because they only have to cover 70%. The downside is that bigger projects may get neglected, and projects with earmarks. However, considering these bigger projects sap the most funds, they really should be covered with a special tax anyway (plus probably some corporate fundraising like is happening with the beltline)