The Kingston Trio in 1959 sang about a man named Charlie who lacked a nickel to make the fare necessary to get off the Boston Mass Transit Authority (MTA) subway. Charlie was doomed forever to ride the subway, the “Man Who Never Returned.”
Today, it’s hard to relate to Charlie’s problem: a 15-cent subway fare (the total Charlie needed) is in the far past. On the other hand, the more I learn about the Transportation SPecial Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) and the uses for which it is intended, the more I feel like I was trapped in a maze of politics worse than the MTA tunnels under Boston.
The TSPLOST is about everything except transportation.
It is about a bunch of politicians out to make what they perceive as the wealthy people pay what the politicians preach to the masses to be the wealthy’s “fair share” of the cost of wasteful government spending. (Or, should that be “fare share”?)
It’s about politicians who just can’t stand that the people of Fayette County voted down a local TSPLOST in 2010, and who have figured out a way to get their revenge by diluting our votes and forcing the tax down our throats.
It is about expanding the control by higher-echelon government of lower-echelon (county, municipal) governments. In that, it is not unlike the latest Obama stimulus package.
It is about consultants creating jobs for themselves.
It’s about taking money that could be used to create wealth and using it to create bureaucracies and make-work jobs for unqualified people, and buying votes thereby.
It’s about buying support by throwing a few bones at Peachtree City and Fayette County.
That’s what it is about. Here’s what it’s not about.
It’s not about solving the two most serious traffic problems in Peachtree City: traffic on Highway 54 between Line Creek and the eastern city limits, and congestion at the intersection of Highway 54 and Highway 74.
It’s not about running a commuter rail from Atlanta through Peachtree City to Senoia. That’s a pipe dream, but one that will waste hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in the attempt. While someday, such a train may run, it will never turn a profit, and will require eternal subsidies.
It’s not about clearing congestion at the intersection of Highway 74 and Interstate 85. That’s a billion-dollar project; the money isn’t there, and never will be.
It’s not about the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) and our membership in that group. ARC is merely a catspaw that the politicians and consultants are using. If not ARC, something else would be used.
The TSPLOST is brought to us by the same state legislature and the same state department of transportation that installed dead plants along Highway 54 in Peachtree City, and then tore some of them out to install curb-cuts, walk-don’t-walk signs, and handicapped ramps leading to nowhere.
It’s brought to us by consultants who proposed relieving congestion at the 74/54 intersection by running a road through Pikes Nursery, the IHOP, Staples, and other stores — and effectively isolating the remaining stores and restaurants on that corner of the intersection.
It’s brought to us by consultants who proposed relieving congestion at the 74/I-85 intersection by running a road through the brand new townhouse development at that intersection.
It’s brought to us by bureaucrats whose first goal is to expand their power and preserve their jobs.
It’s brought to us by parasites in state government who will take our money and return it minus a pound of flesh — and a quart of blood.
It’s brought to us by politicians who have dreamed up yet another way to use our money to buy votes for themselves.
The TSPLOST is a bad idea by any measure of merit.
Government is a beast whose appetite grows as it eats. The more we feed it, the more it wants. The only way out of that vicious cycle is to starve the beast. Defeating the TSPLOST would be a start.
We must take back our government.
Paul W. Lentz, Jr.
Peachtree City, Ga.
