By Maggie Lee / Staff

The House and the Senate overcame years of struggle and approved an historic transportation funding bill on Wednesday, delivering on a plan that would allow Georgia voters to decide whether to hike the sales tax by one cent to pay for roads, bridges and rail projects.

However, two North Fulton legislators voted against the plan that they both first helped set in motion.

Rep. Chuck Martin (R-Alpharetta) said he liked 99 percent of the bill, but had to vote against House Bill 277 because of one obscure provision that removes Fulton cities from MARTA governance.  He called it a "protest" vote.

Rep. Wendell Willard (R-Sandy Springs) vigorously voiced his agitation on how the bill was jammed down his throat with less than two hours to review it before a vote was called. He was also dismayed that the landmark legislation failed to address mass transit.

"I'm absolutely glad we got transportation funding passed," Martin said hours after the successful roll call. But "my vote against the bill was a vote against what happened in the last minute, the deal-making, taking the voice away from North Fulton and South Fulton cities."

The bill shrinks MARTA's governing board from 18 to 11 members. That removes the two chairs that are elected respectively by the North Fulton and South Fulton mayors.

By skipping the mayors, Martin argued, that "makes the MARTA board less responsive to citizens."

The mayors would have kept the chairs under language that Martin expected to emerge from conference committee earlier in the day. But what came out was not what he and other North Fulton legislators had been led to expect the previous night.

HB 277 only emerged from conference committee about lunchtime. And the final vote on the massive bill came in the early evening.

FUNDING, FINALLY, IN A FEW YEARS

Legislators have struggled for years to strike a deal on transportation, bidding in particular to end some of the worst gridlock in the nation in Metro Atlanta. Business leaders have pressed hard for a transportation-funding plan, saying the state's spending has not kept pace with its explosive growth. Supporters say more money is needed to keep and attract businesses to the state, despite critics who say the bill focuses too heavily on the state capital and punishes its public transit system.

Senate Transportation Chairman Jeff Mullis called the bill "history in the making.''

"This is three years of work with so many people involved,'' the Chickamauga Republican said, "It's not perfect ... but it's a step forward.''

The bill splits Georgia into 12 transportation regions that will get the choice of a penny sales tax for big transportation projects. The project lists will first appear on the 2012 primary ballot. The list of works will come from the Georgia Department of Transportation and each region's so-called "roundtable", made of regional commissioners and mayors.

The ten-county core of the Atlanta Regional Commission will be the metro's planning district.

SECOND PENNY IN FULTON SALES TAX

As for MARTA, the legislation removes its financial handcuffs for the next three years, allowing the transit authority to spend more of its money on operations and maintenance. Right now, MARTA must dedicate half of its sales tax revenue to capital projects.

Like most transit systems, MARTA is not fully funded by ticket sales. About 70 percent of MARTA's revenue comes from the Fulton and DeKalb County one-cent sales tax.

That penny will be supplemented by a second penny if the ARC region votes to tax itself in 2012. Though Fulton and DeKalb already pay a MARTA penny, they won't be allowed to opt out of a second penny. The second cent, however, could not be dedicated to existing MARTA maintenance and operations, only new projects.

The logjam on transportation broke this year after Perdue finally threw his support behind the regional sales tax proposal. He explained that after pushing through a bill to overhaul the state Department of Transportation's troubled bureaucracy he now has confidence any additional money would be spent wisely.

Spending on transportation in Georgia has lagged well behind the state's explosive population growth. Georgia spends the second lowest per capita in the country on transportation, ahead of only Tennessee. Road projects in Georgia are funded mostly with money from the state's gasoline tax, but those revenues have tumbled amid recession.

The Senate voted 43-8 for passage; in the House the vote was 141-29. It now moves to Gov. Sonny Perdue. A spokesman expressed support but said the governor needed to review the final measure.