Clayton County Archives - Transportation For America

Important transportation ballot measures decided yesterday

Despite the defeat Tuesday of some high-profile measures, transportation funding asks continue to be approved at very high rates – and a few key wins may have impact for years to come.

While some of the key measures we were tracking did not fare well, on the whole, transportation (and transit specifically) did well at the ballot box (See the full list of measures we’re tracking below.) According to the Center for Transportation Excellence’s final results, 72% of all transit or multimodal measures were approved this year, including yesterday’s results – similar to the trend of recent years.

One of the most significant measures at the state level was considered in Massachusetts, where voters were deciding whether or not to repeal a legislature-approved provision to index the gas tax so revenues could keep up with inflation and allow the state to keep up with their pressing transportation needs. The measure to repeal was approved, albeit at a fairly close margin (52.9-47%), which means that Massachusetts will lose a portion of their new funding for transportation, but not all — they also raised their gas tax by three cents, but that was unaffected by this ballot measure.

The Massachusetts vote was definitely one that other states were watching closely as a potential bellwether for attempts to raise new revenue elsewhere. As Dan Vock at Governing Magazine wrote today, “That is not good news for transportation advocates, who are looking for politically feasible ways to raise money for infrastructure improvements.” Though a handful of other states did succeed in raising their gas taxes over the last couple of years, it’s possible that more states hoping to raise revenues in the next few years will consider a shift away from the per-gallon tax to a sales or wholesale tax (as Virginia and Maryland did for example) rather than trying to add in automatic indexing, which many voters saw negatively in Massachusetts.

Rhode Island voters approved a statewide ballot measure to fund some pretty significant transit improvements across the state, including new transit hubs to connect their popular passenger rail services with buses and other forms of transportation, and improvements to the statewide bus network. Scott Wolf, the executive director of Grow Smart RI, which ran the campaign on the measure, was full of praise today:

We commend our fellow Rhode Islanders for recognizing that these investments will provide benefits far beyond their costs and make it easier for the state to retain and recruit a young, talented and mobile work force. If we can continue to pursue this kind of asset based economic development strategy under Governor-Elect Raimondo, we at Grow Smart RI are confident that Rhode Island’s best days will still be ahead of us.

At the local and regional level, there was perhaps no more significant symbolic vote than the one taken in metro Atlanta yesterday. For the first time in more than 40 years, Atlanta’s MARTA system will be expanding into a new county, as Clayton County, Georgia overwhelmingly approved (73% in favor) a one-percent sales tax increase to join MARTA, expand bus service into the county, and save half of the projected revenue for planning and implementing a possible rail connection into the county.

Clayton was the only one of Atlanta’s five core counties that lacked a local public transit system, and there was a surge of momentum for this referendum after a limited county bus system folded in 2010. When it did, Clayton State University saw a drop in enrollment and scores of jobs at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport got much harder to reach for county residents.

From a regional perspective, with more of the region now having a stake in MARTA — it was intended to serve all five metro counties when it was created, but only two opted in — the agency will expand their base of users and bring more local officials to the table who care about seeing it succeed. And the resounding vote of support with local dollars will likely help continue develop support from the state legislature, where MARTA CEO Keith Parker has been hard at work to create allies for the only major transit agency that receives no dedicated funding from the state.

The news was not so good one state further south, where Pinellas County, Florida (St. Petersburg/Clearwater) saw their Greenlight Pinellas referendum roundly defeated, with only 38% in favor. (A smaller similar measure was also defeated in Polk County, to the east of Tampa.) The referendum would have made enormous expansions to their existing bus service, added new bus rapid transit corridors, and begin laying the groundwork for light rail running through the spine of the county.

It’s a blow not just for Pinellas County, the most densely populated county in the state, but also for the Tampa region at large. Business and civic leaders were hoping that Pinellas would take a first step that Tampa would follow in 2016 with a measure of their own, as they stitch together a region with two major cities divided by the bay. Pinellas leaders can take heart, however, in the fact that many places have lost their first (or even second) run at an ambitious ballot measure, before winning in the end.

We’ll be back shortly with a look at some of the national and state candidate races, and the implications of all the moves in Congress will have on the precarious nature of the nation’s transportation fund, and the upcoming reauthorization of MAP-21 in 2015.

State

Massachusetts – Question 1 to repeal state’s new funding for transportation
Result: Measure Approved (52.9% – 47.1%)
T4A summary: Massachusetts vote a bellwether for efforts to raise state transportation revenue

Rhode Island – Question 6 transit bond measure
Result: Measure Approved (60% – 40%)
T4A summary: Rhode Island’s first statewide ballot measure to support transit

Wisconsin – Question 1 for transportation funding
Result: Measure Approved (79.9% – 20.1%)
T4A summary: Voters in two states consider measures to restrict funding to transportation uses

Maryland – Question 1 on transportation funding
Result: Measure Approved (81.6% – 18.4%)
T4A summary: Voters in two states consider measures to restrict funding to transportation uses

Texas – Proposition 1 to direct rainy day funds into highways
Result: Measure Approved (79.8% – 20.2%)
T4A summary: Texas looks to voters to ensure billions in highway funding

Louisiana – State infrastructure bank
Result: Measure Defeated (67.5% – 32.5%)

Local

Clayton County, GA – One percent sales tax to join MARTA and re-start bus service
Result: Measure Approved (74% – 26%)
T4A summary: After spurning it for decades, suburban Atlanta county seems poised to join regional transit system

City of Seattle, WA – Proposition 1 to add a 0.1% sales and use tax to prevent bus cuts
Result: Measure Approved (59% – 41%)

Austin, Texas – Proposition 1 for $600 million bond for light rail
Result: Measure Defeated (43% – 57%)

Pinellas County, Florida (St. Petersburg) – Greenlight Pinellas for improving transit service & adding light rail
Result: Measure defeated (38% – 62%)
T4America summary: Leaders say St. Petersburg measure key to economic success

Alameda County, CA – Measure BB for a half-percent increase in sales tax to fund local transit and transportation projects
Result: Measure Approved (70% – 30%)

Gainesville, FL (Alachua County) – 1% sales tax for a range of transportation improvements
Result: Measure Defeated (40% – 60%)

After spurning it for decades, suburban Atlanta county seems poised to join regional transit system

In many states local jurisdictions have to get permission from their state legislature to raise local funds for transportation. One of the most notable examples of this will be taking place in a county in the heart of metro Atlanta, Georgia.

Click for more stories and information about a few key issues that will be decided on November 4

From the day when Clayton County, one of metro Atlanta’s core five counties, had to cancel their bus transit service outright in 2010, local leaders have been trying to figure out how to bring back transit service back and better connect their residents with jobs and opportunities.

In a county with a large population of low-wage workers, residents and employers alike are hungry for an affordable and reliable way to get around and get to work. C-Tran, the former county-run bus service, provided more than 2 million rides each year, helping residents get to jobs — especially the thousands of jobs in or near bustling Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in the north end of the county.

Read a short story of how shutting down the system affected one Clayton resident. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Click to open

It was a huge blow to the residents of Clayton County when county commissioners shut the service down in 2010 in the face of a recession-fueled budget crisis. Federal start-up funds and support from the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority had kept the service going since the early 2000s, but with that funding drying up the county faced a deficit that was too much to overcome.

Clayton County voters will decide a one-percent sales tax on Nov. 4 that will bring them into the MARTA system and bring bus service into the county. Flickr photo by James Williamor.

On Nov. 4, Clayton County voters will decide on a measure to increase the local sales tax by a percent to join MARTA, the regional transit system. Doing so would restore bus service and jumpstart planning for bus rapid transit or a rail extension in the years to come. As county commissioners debated whether or not to put the question on the ballot, they heard hefty support from residents, who turned out to meetings to urge commissioners to make a vote happen. And most of the commissioners saw the need. From a piece by Next City, published just yesterday:

At a packed board of commissioners meeting on July 1st, former State Rep. Roberta Abdul Salaam described what this looked like for formerly bus-dependent residents.

“I have people, students, young men that can’t take jobs for the summer because we don’t have transportation for them,” she said. “And someone said earlier don’t make it emotional — well let me just apologize now. I get emotional when I see little old women walking down Tara Boulevard in the ditch in the rain, and there’s not even anywhere to pull over and pick her up.”

Yet voters in Clayton County, or anywhere else, can only have this opportunity if the state they live in has authorized local communities to raise revenues through ballot measures.

“Enabling” legislation

State enabling laws must be in place before local ballot measures can even be considered — they either have to be on the books already, or passed ahead of a specific measure (as happened in Clayton’s case). These laws can govern many aspects of local ballot measures, including the type and duration of the levy, the process for getting a measure on the ballot, the permissible uses for the revenue, and sometimes even the exact language that must be presented to the voters.

A handful of bills were passed recently enabling local governments to raise local revenues for transportation in MN, PA, IN, NV, and CA and bills were considered in AL, MD, MI, SC, SD, UT, VA and WA during the 2013-2014 sessions. We recently covered a notable example in Indiana, where a law was passed just this year allowing Indianapolis to finally raise local funding to invest in their ambitious regional IndyConnect plan.

To make this vote possible for Clayton County, the Georgia General Assembly had to pass a pair of laws to “enable” Clayton to take the measure to the ballot, and they did so in 2013, with some specific restrictions.

Interestingly, state law already provided for Clayton to be a part of MARTA, and as one of the five core counties included in the 1970’s charter actually had a vote on the MARTA board. But Clayton and two other counties declined to pass the sales tax, and only the City of Atlanta, Dekalb and Fulton counties ponied up. In the meantime, Clayton had used it’s available sales tax percentage — state law caps it — for other purposes. That meant that the state had to waive that cap specifically for Clayton so they could decide on the MARTA tax. (A second piece of legislation was required to restructure the MARTA board to give Clayton County two representatives on the board starting next year.)

The legislation specified that the vote be restricted to raising revenue to join MARTA, rather than contracting for service as in the past, and the county had to take action this year.

Read this short primer on enabling legislation from our “Measuring Up” package of resources geared around state transportation funding.

Measuring Up

All state enabling laws are not created equal. A great counter-example is the one provided by the same Georgia assembly just a few years earlier. After no fewer than three tries before the state legislature, the state finally gave all Georgia metropolitan regions the power to pass regional transportation sales taxes. But that also came with a mandated two-year political process to develop a project list that swelled to 157 highway and transit projects for Atlanta in the end.

That 2012 referendum to raise $7.2 billion to invest in regional transportation needs failed in metro Atlanta for a lot of reasons, but as we opined at the time, the way the enabling law was written by the legislature may have contributed to its demise.

“Many voters also complained of a sense that the project list was a goodie bag for various political interests and not a cohesive plan to address well-articulated needs. The Legislature-mandated process almost assured that outcome. It called for creating a 21-member “regional roundtable” made up of a mayor and county commissioner from each of the region’s ten counties, plus the mayor of Atlanta. While the “pro” campaign pitched the project list as a solution to congestion, the list struck many voters as a collection of pet local projects that did not necessarily add up to a thought-through plan.”

In the end, there was a lot of “include my project on the list and we’ll support yours” horse-trading amongst the representatives developing the project list that might have doomed the measure.

Clayton’s prospects on November 4

But Clayton voters face a simple question on November 4: raise local sales taxes by a percent to join MARTA, create new robust bus service into the county starting in March 2015, and save half of the revenues (locked away in escrow) for planning or building some higher capacity transit in the years to come. And one thing we know from experience with ballot measures is that the simpler the question and the more clear it is what the money is going to buy, the more likely voters are to support it.

It’s also worth looking back at how Clayton County voted on that aforementioned regional transportation tax from 2012 — one that did include restored local bus service for Clayton, but which wasn’t expected to begin service for at least two to four years after the vote. It also included a handful of road improvement projects and initial development of a long-awaited commuter rail line south toward Macon that would run through the county.

If you look at that graphic, where Clayton is highlighted near the bottom, the bulk of the county’s precincts supported it between a 42-66% clip, with a handful of precincts at numbers below that. On top of that, more than 7o percent of voters approved the concept of participation in a regional transit system in a nonbinding referendum on the ballot just a couple of years ago.

The local experts we talked to were all cautiously optimistic that it’s going to pass, and many local political analysts are suggesting that it could possibly win by a pretty significant margin. Of course, turnout will play a big role in what happens, as always. We’ll be watching closely on election night and reporting back here, so stay tuned.

Want to know more about enabling legislation? Need help doing what Clayton County had to do and getting your state to clear the way for a local revenue-raising measure? Join us in Denver in just a few weeks on Nov. 13-14 for Capital Ideas — the premier conference for state legislation related to new transportation revenue.

Important state and local transportation measures will be decided at the ballot this year

This November a handful of measures will be decided at ballot boxes across the country to raise (or reduce in one case) new revenue for transportation at the local or state level. It’s not quite a new phenomenon — local communities have often gone to voters to raise additional money for transportation investments — but it’s grown in importance the last few years as federal transportation funding has been facing an increasingly uncertain future.

We will be keeping a close eye on a number of important races, including some that we’ve been following for some time.

In Pinellas County, Florida (St. Petersburg), voters will be deciding a question to raise the sales tax to build a light-rail system and put more buses on the road. According to the St. Pete Tribune, $30 million in property taxes that fund the transit agency would be replaced by an estimated $130 million a year from a one-cent sales tax hike. The new revenue would pay for the Greenlight Pinellas plan, which includes a 65 percent increase in bus service (including development of dedicated lanes for bus rapid transit) and development of new light rail. Supporters have brought together an impressive coalition, including vocal members of the business community. Michael Kalt, a senior vice president with the Tampa Bay Rays, told Greenlight that, “Transit is really the linchpin to economic success and improving the quality of life in any major metropolitan area.”

Just four years after their bus service was completely canceled, Clayton County, Georgia, one of metro Atlanta’s core counties, will go to the ballot to vote on approving a penny sales tax to restore local transit operations and join the regional MARTA system — something voters, local leaders and citizens alike strongly support. When Clayton County lost their bus service, they lost something that employers — especially those at mammoth Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport — depended on to get employees to work every day. There are thousands of airport-related jobs at the edge of Clayton County, and a good transit connection was a boost for residents and businesses desiring access to that economic magnet. This vote was made possible when the Georgia general assembly passed a measure to enable the local voters to raise that revenue; something known as “enabling legislation.” (Something we’ll be going into detail on with the agenda for Capital Ideas! -Ed.)

The Massachusetts legislature passed an ambitious plan in 2013 to raise the gas tax three cents and index it to inflation and requiring the state’s transportation agencies to raise more money from tolls, fees, fares, and others. Though all but one of the legislators who voted for the bill won their primaries earlier this year, opponents succeeded in getting a measure added to this November’s ballot to reverse the plan to index the gas tax to inflation (keeping the 3-cent increase, however.) In response, a broad coalition has been organized to urge MA voters to vote against Question 1 on the ballot to avoid cutting vital transportation funding that would help the state keep up with one of the oldest transportation systems in the country.

One consistent thread in these state and local stories is that the folks on the ground in these towns, cities, and metro areas know how important transportation is to their economic success. And keeping those local economies humming is key to our national economic prosperity.

Shortly after these important elections in November, the focus will turn to 2015 and what can be done to raise more money for transportation at the state level. Which is one reason why we’re convening a special conference called Capital Ideas on November 13th and 14th in Denver to bring those people making 2015 plans together with experts and veterans of successful plans to raise revenue at the state level.

Whether you are just beginning a funding campaign, working to overcome a legislative impasse, or defending a key legislative win, Capital Ideas will offer a detailed, interactive curriculum of best practices, campaign tactics, innovative policies, and peer-to-peer collaboration to help your initiative succeed. (Find out more about that here.)

Locals encountering help or hindrance from states on their transportation plans

Flickr photo by John Greenfield http://www.flickr.com/photos/24858199@N00/10090187245/

Several places have been in the news lately as they find their ambitious efforts to solve transportation challenges hinging on legislative action this lawmaking season. In some, state legislators are helping out with enabling legislation, but in others they are challenging the concept of local control and threatening needed investment.

The prime case of the latter has been in Nashville, where a handful of Tennessee legislators decided to interfere in a regional Nashville plan to build a first-of-its-kind bus rapid transit system through the region’s core.

An initial measure from a non-Nashville lawmaker would have required a vote of the General Assembly to approve the BRT line, despite the state DOT’s role in planning the line as a member of the Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization’s board. An amendment to an unrelated bill said flatly: ”No rapid bus project in a metropolitan form of government, such as Nashville, could be built without the permission of the … General Assembly.”

Mayors of Tennessee’s four large cities immediately saw the threat that legislative micromanaging posed to their ability to meet their economic challenges and fired off a letter (pdf) that helped persuade legislators to try a different tack. The House version now simply affirms the status quo that the DOT must approve use of state right-of-way for a transit line and that only the legislature can appropriate state funds.

But new language was added in the Senate’s version that would prohibit any transit system from picking up or dropping off passengers in the middle of state roads as a “safety” measure — exactly what’s planned for The Amp line — regardless of what the Federal Transit Administration or engineers at TDOT have to say about the safety track record of center-running BRT. (Center running BRT is already in use or on the way in Cleveland, OH; Eugene, OR; San Bernardino, CA; Chicago, IL; and a handful of other cities.)

Current conditions on Ashland in Chicago, and rendering of the new planned center-running BRT for the corridor. Does one of these streets look safer for pedestrians than the other?

In Indiana, meanwhile, the legislature finally granted metro Indianapolis the right to vote on funding a much-expanded bus network, including bus rapid transit. What it won’t include is light rail, as dictated by the new law, which would allow six counties to hold referendums to let voters decide whether to build a transit system using mostly income-tax revenue, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Despite the mode-specific directive, it was a big victory for the business community, who pointed out that the state stands to benefit if growth engine Indianapolis continues to succeed economically. The region is a hotbed of healthcare jobs, and once again, providing a better bus system — something Mayor Greg Ballard and region’s other leaders are committed to doing — means that those employers get access to a bigger pool of workers, and workers of all incomes can reach a greater range of jobs.

Four years after their bus service was completely canceled, Clayton County just south of Atlanta proper is catching a helping hand from the Georgia general assembly. Lawmakers just passed a measure that would allow Clayton County voters to vote on approving a penny sales tax to restore local transit operations — something voters, local leaders and citizens alike strongly support.

When Clayton County lost that bus service, they lost something that employers — especially those at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport — depended on to get employees to work every day. There are thousands of jobs at that enormous airport right at the edge of Clayton County, and a good transit connection was a boost for jobs and residents to benefit from that economic magnet.

Up in Minnesota, the state is moving a huge comprehensive funding package for transportation across the state — one of many states considering ways to raise their own new revenue for transportation. (See our tracker) A House committee voted 9-6 Friday to pass the comprehensive transportation funding bill (HF 2395). Similar legislation didn’t make it through the House committee in 2013.

Supporting and enabling these efforts is exactly what states should be doing as local cities and regions are trying desperately to make these sorts of investments a reality, usually with their own skin in the game; not obstructing them at every turn.

When a city or region wants to raise a tax via public ballot vote to improve their transportation network, shouldn’t the state leaders proudly support those efforts of a city bootstrapping their way up?

Editors note: We’re in the process of updating it with 2014 information, but you can find similar information to the Minnesota plan over on our State Funding Tracker, which focuses largely on state (i.e., not local) plans to fund transportation.