A former top Atlanta city official pitched a penny sales tax for transportation to the Buckhead Business Association, saying it is the answer to the region’s transportation problems.
Steve Labovitz, a resident of Sandy Springs who is now specializes in public private partnerships, on Jan. 5 also praised the city of Sandy Springs for the way it has implemented its system of outsourcing most of its basic services to private companies.
Labovitz, who served as chief of staff to former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell from 1994 to 1997, said the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, commonly known as the T-SPLOST, will put Georgians back to work by funding $6.14 billion in transportation projects in a 10-county region around Atlanta.
“This is a real opportunity for our region,” he told the BBA. “We have been trying to deal with transportation issues for years now … This is really a drop in the bucket of what we will need, but it is a start and for Georgia, which is suffering from unemployment, this is a way to put people back to work.”
The regional penny sales tax is scheduled to go before voters in July, but that could change this legislative session, Labovitz said.
Labovitz spent time talking about the arguments being made against the sales tax. Some local leaders aren’t happy with the current list of projects. The Atlanta BeltLine will receive $600 million, another sore spot for those who don’t think it is a true transportation project, a view echoed by Sandy Springs Mayor Eva Galambos. Labovitz also said people want to know who will be watching the money collected for the projects.
He said if the tax passes, there will be many private-public partnerships formed to get the projects moving. “That public-private partnership I was talking about will come into play. You’re going to try to leverage what the government will do with what the private sector will do,” Labovitz said.
Labovitz predicted the vote on the tax will be close because of widespread anti-tax sentiment in the region.
BBA member Heather Wright said there are many questions about the tax that need to be answered by the state Legislature during the current session. She said she would have a problem supporting a transportation tax with so many unanswered questions.
On his assessment of Sandy Springs, Labovitz said he had been initially skeptical of the public-private partnership proposed by the city. But six years later, he thinks the city has been successful so far.
He said the city’s ultimate success will be measured by how it handles the transition from contractor to contractor. Last year the city split up its service contracts, taking the bulk of the work performed by contractor CH2M HILL and entering into contracts with different companies.
“I have come around to believe that there are services that the government should not be in and it can be handled much cheaper by having private sector do it,” Labovitz said. “I believe Sandy Springs has done pretty well, but time will tell.”
