Moving the Goalposts on T-SPLOST

By the time you read this, we'll have had three mostly quiet days of the General Assembly's special session. Sure, the Democrats are complaining (not without reason, mind you) that the Republicans have turned the process into a partisan all-you-can-eat buffet, but is anyone really listening to Democrats on the state level these days?

Instead, let's talk about the other elephant in the room. Lawmakers are haggling over a bill (backed by the Governor) to move the statewide referendum on a one-cent transportation sales tax from the July primary to the November general election.

First, though, let's do a little T-SPLOST 101 for those of you who have more worthwhile summer plans than following every twist and turn of transportation policy in Georgia.

Some time ago, lawmakers in Atlanta finally woke up to the fact that transportation in Georgia, well, sucks. Perhaps the wake-up call was the several billion dollars the state Department of Transportation couldn't find a few years ago. Perhaps it was when other southern states got billions of dollars of stimulus money to develop passenger rail, while we got a measly couple of hundred thousand for a feasibility study.

Perhaps they simply just got tired of looking at the same patch of pavement for 30 minutes at a stretch on I-85 day after day.

"Dadgummit!" you can almost hear them say. "I was half hour late to a lobbyist cocktail party last night! We've got to do something about this traffic!"

And thus, the T-SPLOST (that's a transportation special purpose local option sales tax, if you're not into the whole brevity thing) was born. It's just like the local SPLOSTs we've seen here in Athens - you get a predetermined list of stuff the money is going to do, and you decide whether those projects are worth an extra penny to you.

Funny thing about politicians. They'll bend over backwards to avoid raising your taxes in an election year, but they have no qualms at all about asking you to do it to yourself.

In the case of this T-SPLOST, the referendum has to be approved on the regional level, which means that not only does it have to pass in Athens-Clarke County, but also in Barrow, Elbert, Greene, Jackson, Jasper, Madison, Morgan, Newton, Oconee and Walton Counties. It goes without saying that, in terms of politics, the voters in some of those counties are not nearly as tax-happy as we are here in ACC.

That's a big political problem for Governor Nathan Deal and the leadership in the House and Senate. They want this thing to pass. More importantly, they desperately need it to pass. 

Right now, the big vote (the one you get to make) is scheduled for July, same as the Republican and Democratic primaries. Not the presidential primaries, but the ones for state and local offices. That creates a big problem for Republican leaders. Looking at the tea leaves and the electoral calendar, they realized that there is nothing but nothing happening in the Democratic primary next year. No race to find a sacrificial lamb for U.S. Senate or Governor. No nothing.

And, Lord help them, Deal and his legislative leadership need Democratic votes to pass this thing. Their party, which has become disturbingly full of steely-eyed anti-tax zealots in recent years, isn't going to march lockstep on this. The political calculus is pretty easy. The new breed of Tea Party Republicans never met a tax they liked, but Democrats... hey, they still like trains and stuff, right?

Right. Hence the Governor's push to move the big T-SPLOST vote to November.

There's a thing in legal circles called judge-shopping. Smart lawyers do it every chance they get -- gaming the system to get their case in front of a judge they think is more inclinced to be friendly to their client. This is no different, except that you're the judge. In the eyes of the smart lawyers in Atlanta (most of them are, you know), the electorate in November 2012 is going to be a lot more Democratic than the electorate likely to show up in July.

Let's bring it back home to Athens. Here in town, T-SPLOST is probably going to pass regardless of when the vote is held. Barring a minor revolt, the political calculus tells us that we've got the votes here to pass it. Despite grumblings from all over the community, last year's SPLOST passed 60%-40%.

Not so in those other counties around us. Those voters look at any new tax, even one you get to decide on for yourself, the same way they look at what the cat left on the doorstep this morning.

And just like the political math tells us that Athens will probably support the T-SPLOST, it also tells us that we won't deliver enough yes votes to counteract the anti-tax fervor in, say, Jackson County.

It's the same across the state, and moving the vote from a light-turnout July election to a high-turnout November election in a presidential year is just a last-ditch attempt to seed enough pro-T-SPLOST votes into the mix to narrowly pass the plan and start building some roads, railroad tracks, and sidewalks.

It's a little bit of old-fashioned judge-shopping, election-style.