Volume 7 Issue 27…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…July 9, 2004

MARTA (1950-1998)

In the 1950s, regional planners recognized the importance of mass transit to economic growth and development and implemented a series of transit studies. Ten years later, the Atlanta Transit System published its first specific rapid transit proposal. Georgia House Resolution (#668-121) formed the Metropolitan Atlanta Transit Study Commission (MATSC) to examine need, advisability and feasibility of rapid mass transportation.

An amendment to the State Constitution making rapid transit a government function failed statewide, but passed in the two largest counties, DeKalb and Fulton. In 1964, an amendment to the State Constitution requiring ratification only by the metropolitan counties to make rapid transit legislation passed by 66%.

In March 1965, S.E. 102, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority or MARTA Act, became law. Before the agency could begin operations, voters in five counties and the City of Atlanta had to approve a local referendum. The June 1965 referendum ratifying participation in MARTA passed in four of the five counties and the City of Atlanta. It failed in Cobb. In January 1966, MARTA was established as an agency.

In 1970, the MARTA Board formally declared its intention to acquire the Atlanta Transit System (ATS) as early as possible under terms to be mutually negotiated. The following year, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter signed House Bill 219, which amended the Georgia Sales Tax Law to permit a local sales and use tax in metropolitan Atlanta for rapid transit purposes. In September 1971, local governments called for a special referendum on the MARTA plan.

On November 9,1971, the special Rapid Transit referendum passed in Fulton and DeKalb counties. It failed in Gwinnett and Clayton counties.

In 1972, MARTA purchased the Atlanta Transit System for $12,958,074. It reduced the fare from 40 cents to 15 cents with no charge for transfers and a uniform fare throughout the MARTA service area of Fulton and DeKalb Counties. On April 1, 1972, the one-cent MARTA sales tax went into effect in those two counties.

MARTA park and ride facilities opened, bus ridership increased throughout the 1970s, construction priorities for the rapid rail program were established and the MARTA Board began campaigning for the extension of the one-cent MARTA sales tax beyond 1982.

In January 1978, the Board resolution regarding fare policy adopted August 9, 1971 was rescinded, allowing the fare to increase. In February, the Board passed a resolution requesting the extension of the one-cent sales tax for a minimum of 12 additional years. For the second time, MARTA announced plans to issue sales tax revenue bonds worth $100 million.

In 1983, the sales tax was extended 15 years to 2012. MARTA opened five stations (1984): Lindbergh Center, Lenox, Brookhaven, Oakland City and Lakewood/Ft. McPherson, and implemented shuttle bus service from Lakewood/Ft. McPherson to the airport.

Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s MARTA grew, adding new rail service and economic development projects. Fare increases, budget cuts, reduced service on existing bus routes, a hiring freeze and layoffs were employed to counter sagging revenues and declining ridership. (Source: www.itsmarta.com)

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is learning to handle the trials and tribulations of being an older brother. Younger by five years, his little brother is generally viewed as a "pest." When queried for comments, a discussion of their close and sustained proximity over the summer break ensued. The Dark One/Ninja/Zorro described the situation as "horrible," then agreed that "familiarity breeds concept."

By John Burl Smith

What is a penny worth? Not much! Yet, in Georgia, a penny turned a governor and state legislators into thieves.

A coalition of taxpayers, environmentalists, and MARTA workers marched on the Georgia Department of Transportation on Monday (6-28-04) to oppose job and service cuts. Desperately demanding more funds for MARTA, they hoped black legislators, like Rep. George Maddox, Chairman of the MARTA oversight committee, would stop helping the state take DeKalb and Fulton's MARTA sales tax to pay for bus service for commuting whites in the 13 Counties around Atlanta.

Tactically, marching is a throwback to the 1970s when a penny had real value. A penny was all it took to create the only rapid transit system in the South in DeKalb and Fulton Counties. Back then, Roy Barnes was a Cobb County political upstart that fought using their pennies for MARTA, which would bring blacks to Cobb. Ignorant of history, marchers, like black legislators, fail to realize the thieves that stole MARTA are not about to give up any of the billions of dollars that the MARTA one-cent brings to metro Atlanta.

When Roy Barnes became governor in 1998, he realized that all those pennies Cobb, Clayton and Gwinnett kept were worthless, but the pennies DeKalb and Fulton invested in MARTA, as a "dedicated source of revenue," was money in the bank, if only the state could control it. Barnes and the legislature created a swindle called the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) to do just that.

Basically, the State of Georgia is constitutionally prohibited from funding MARTA's operating budget. The legislature has never appropriated one dime for MARTA's operation. Therefore, the state legislature had no legal basis for authorizing GRTA to take control of MARTA's revenues without compensating its owners, DeKalb and Fulton Counties' citizens. Like WMD in Iraq, the trick was for the state to assert the right to take MARTA as its "regional transportation hub." The real gimmick in getting control of MARTA's pennies, the region's only "dedicated source of mass transit revenue," was keeping whites from contesting the state's claim.

Appeasing the racist tendencies of whites, Barnes and the legislature, including blacks, promised not to extend the penny tax to the 11 predominately white counties covered by GRTA. Furthermore, GRTA would use MARTA funds to provide them bus service. This nifty move reduced opposition to GRTA down to predominantly black DeKalb and Fulton, the only counties that pay the MARTA one-cent sales tax.

GRTA now has direct control of billions in mass transit funds that previously went to MARTA. Georgia can use this money for special projects and issue billions of dollars in bonds. To keep the pipeline in place, the legislature extended DeKalb and Fulton's sales tax obligation to 2047. If a penny is worth so little and the benefits so badly needed, why have Gwinnett, Clayton and Cobb refused to pay the MARTA tax?

Taxation without representation describes what the Georgia legislature imposed on DeKalb and Fulton counties in 1999 with GRTA. Tactically as vital to DeKalb and Fulton's progress, as Brown v Board of Education was to blacks in ending segregation, marchers need to file a class action lawsuit to force the state to explain and defend its action in taking over MARTA without compensation. Moreover, extending the transportation tax to 2047 without a referendum and not taxing all counties covered by GRTA, place the state in violation of Fifth Amendment "due process," Eighth Amendment "cruel and unusual" punishment and Fourteenth Amendment "equal protection" rights of DeKalb and Fulton Counties' citizens. Are constitutional rights worth a penny?

Vote 2004

The 2004 primary elections in Georgia will be held on July 20. While news coverage tends to focus on the nation's capital, races for the White House and Congress, decisions made at the state and local levels have profound impacts on our lives. Hence, the phrase "all politics are local."

Registered voters should gather information about the candidates and plan to take a pal to the polls and vote. If you are eligible, but unregistered to vote, register and be prepared to vote in the general election on November 2. A vote this November could determine the future course of your community and this country.

In the next two weeks, The DISH will highlight some local races and issues. Voters will be filling elected positions from city court clerk to county commission.

Mass Transit: Taxation and Opposition

"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing." French Finance Minister Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683)

Public transportation in metro Atlanta has long encountered fierce opposition in predominantly white suburbs and outlying counties. Whites fleeing school desegregation in the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v Board of Education (1954) refused to support public transportation. Citing crime and reduced property values, code to obscure class and racial bias, Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton Counties' voters refused to support MARTA. Today, neither of these counties imposes the MARTA one-cent sales tax.

Reflecting white opposition, several legislative efforts to strengthen state support of mass transit were vetoed by Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, an unreconstructed racist. White opposition to mass transit meant those least able to pay, but most desperately in need of public transportation, were thoroughly plucked. Ironically, while predominantly black Fulton and DeKalb Counties have paid the regressive MARTA sales tax since 1972, some of the most under-served areas continue to pay the tax while access to rapid rail and state funded express bus service is provided or planned for counties where no mass transit tax is imposed.

A lack of hissing on the part of taxpayers, voters and those elected to represent DeKalb and Fulton Counties when former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes created the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) allowed the diversion of planned rapid rail service from South DeKalb County, where the MARTA one-cent sales tax is imposed, to accommodate Douglas and Cobb Counties that do not pay the MARTA tax. As gas prices rise, raising the cost of commuting, reducing discretionary incomes and lowering standards of living, mass transit becomes more attractive. Unless DeKalb and Fulton voters, taxpayers and elected representatives do some hissing, more of this kind of dissing, in terms of service shortfall, can be expected in the future.

With the takeover of MARTA, the state controls the only revenue stream dedicated to mass transit. In addition to controlling federal mass transit dollars, GRTA can issue billions of dollars in revenue bonds and general obligation bonds to fund mass transit projects. To ensure this dedicated revenue stream remains intact, the state extended the MARTA tax, which is only imposed in predominantly black DeKalb and Fulton, until 2047. This is classic taxation without representation.

Unhappy Taxpayer/Voter Report Card

Unhappy Taxpayer and Voter Organization, a group formed by DeKalb citizens Viola Davis and Ruby Lee Bozeman-Davis, correctly identifies taxpayers and voters as the employers of elected officials. As the election season approaches, the group is urging taxpayers and voters to remember our votes hire and fire elected officials, and our tax dollars pay their salaries and fund government operations.

With the role of taxpayers and voters as employers in mind, the organization developed an interesting set of criteria in determining whether to hire a candidate or fire an incumbent. Called a nationwide report card, it lists qualities and characteristics for hiring new or retaining public servants and firing incumbents. Desirable qualities and characteristics of a new candidate include integrity, competence, dedication to keeping taxpayers informed, courage and enough backbone to speak truth to power and do the right thing. Similarly, the report card lists undesirable characteristics and qualities displayed by incumbents that voters should fire.

In identifying qualities and characteristics to hire and fire, the Unhappy Taxpayer and Voter Organization asked, "Are you tired of 'Gonna Do Politicians?'" A 'Gonna Do Politician' makes promises to get elected. Once in office, he/she forgets those promises, refuses to return telephone calls, does not answer constituent correspondence or get involved in community issues.

Unfortunately, predominantly black DeKalb and Fulton Counties have a number of incumbents that should be fired. The DeKalb and Fulton delegations have refused to address inequities in the state's takeover of MARTA and discrimination in regional mass transit funding. Their failure to fight for an I-20 MARTA train to serve South DeKalb County and to end environmental racism make incumbents from DeKalb's CEO down to state representatives unfit for office.

Upcoming elections give Georgia taxpayers and voters an opportunity to fire incompetent incumbents and hire new public servants. For more about Unhappy Taxpayer and Voter Organization, call 404-296-4356.

By James Bredin

The Liberal reluctance for Canadian change was inherited long long ago,

When George the general and George the king had a thing about the status quo,

That Liberal reluctance is still alive no matter what their publicity says,

As they tax and spend and pretend to amend but refuse to change their ways,

As Canadians watch their dollar drop, downwards towards a dime,

And compare the slide to a shaft decent in darkness of a mine.

The Liberals hide their secret agenda as they prime their propaganda,

As they synchronize and harmonize and sing their memoranda,

When doing the right thing they always sing about foreign country places,

These pompous prudes all preach their creed, about all their socialist cases,

As they send the billions outward bound and leave the country bust,

Watch the national debt as it elevates and the loonie in the dust.

They refuse to use the notwithstanding clause for delirious Court decisions,

So the High Court sits and rules these twits while they reflect on futile revisions,

And democracy defiled as socialists smile and the loonie keeps losing ground,

No representation through all that taxation and the dollar keeps going down,

And the Charter rights for these terrorist types is stuck in the status quo,

While the immigration reps disguise their steps and fiddle with the foe.

The humiliation that hangs to Canadian hands as they stick to the status quo,

And Liberals call an election to select more places to send the dough,

To regions or organizations where with pride they slide a million or two or ten,

And bold as brass they send more brass to those Shawinigan men,

And then got reelected though they represent less than one in four,

No representation by population and they did it all before.

About Me: Poet James Bredin is Canadian. The above work speaks of conditions unique to that nation. Yet, taxation without representation is universal. By changing a few phrases here and there, one could be almost anywhere taxes are levied. For this universality, the author is commended. Email jbredin@idirect.com with comments or suggestions. For more of his work, see http://www.dreamagic.com/poetry/bredin.html.

Disgruntled says: "Taxation without representation" rallied the American colonies in declaring independence from Britain and the arrogant King George III. Given this, how can taxation without representation, such as George W. Bush's tax cuts, escape wholesale damnation? The Social Security surplus made the tax cuts possible. Workers that pay the greatest share of their wages into Social Security do not earn enough to pay federal income taxes. Hence, they did not qualify for Bush's tax cuts, which benefited those in the top income brackets. Moreover, most poor workers die before drawing a dime of Social Security. This situation is a travesty that should tug at the moral fabric of the nation, but has failed to stir its quiescent conscience.

Disgruntled feels: Litigious! In a society where big business can destroy the health of its workers, rob its shareholders, like Ken Lay of Enron, and damage the environment, lawyers play an essential role in forcing them to repair the damage and compensate those harmed. Those who scream the loudest for tort reform represent the companies that have caused the greatest harm, such as the asbestos killers. People should have a right to sue these scoundrels in the nearest court.

Disgruntled wants to know: Learning is a lifelong process that should be encouraged and actively embraced by all humans. Learning, however, is not education, which is indoctrination. One wonders, do black critics, such as Bill Cosby, know the difference?

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