A half-cent sales tax to fund an expansion of MARTA has been paired back to $2.5 billion and the city limits of Atlanta instead of $8 billion for the region, but Atlanta voters will have a chance to decide on the new tax despite its near demise.
Andria Simmons reports on the reborn efforts to fund transit in Atlanta, a few weeks after the Georgia State Legislature killed an $8 billion transit sales tax proposal.
Simmons provides a dispatch from a recent public appearance by Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, where the mayor "shared his thoughts…"on what an additional $2.5 billion of transit funding could mean for the city." This proposal has the necessary backing from the State Legislature, as of Simmons's writing. The final decision will come from the city's voters, who will consider a half-cent sales tax, to be added to the existing 1 percent sales tax that funds MARTA.
The article includes an interview between Mayor Reed and Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff writer J. Scott Trubey. One point that emerges immediately: the sales tax initiative only decides the funding mechanism for the MARTA expansion, while only creating what Mayor Reed describes as "a very nice runway to structure the project list and to have a very robust public discussion about what that should look like."
Angie Schmitt offers additional commentary on the back-from-the-dead trick pulled by the transit sales tax.
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