For those of you who stayed on top of the regional transportation center the JTA wanted to put in the downtown, this is part and parcel to the same regional group our center would have been a part of. Please note the regional group indicated a 16% regional tax should be imposed (the regional groups are unelected and very much not under the control of the local governments, states or the federal government for that matter..........but they more closely align with the federal department of transportation which is very much attune to agenda 21 and the stack and pack plans........don't take my word for it, check their web site and take a look around). Anyway, the voters of Georgia said NO. Atlanta has a traffic problem, so the solution was to make everyone in the state pay to fix it, and the residents of Georgia disagreed on that solution!
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Posted by Erick Erickson

Wednesday, August 1st at 10:37AM EDT

Voters in Georgia do not trust the political establishment in Georgia right now. What compounds this is that I get the sense much of the political establishment in Georgia holds the citizens in contempt. They just won’t do as they are told.

The T-SPLOST fell victim to this conundrum. The Georgia Legislature, in the past four years, has decided that instead of voting to cut spending or raise taxes, they’d send tax increases for votes with the people. The first was on trauma care funding. It failed. Now its was infrastructure spending.

The legislature came up with something called a Transportation Special Purpose Local Options Sales Tax, or T-SPLOST. Voters in twelve regions of the state — artificial constructs created by bureaucrats — were told by the legislature to either raise their taxes by 16% or see their transportation funding cut. It didn’t go like the legislature and local politicians expected it to. The voters overwhelmingly rejected the T-SPLOST in most of the state.

Now, of course, several regions of the state went along with it. Some of those areas are the poorest in the state. Their sales tax will now increase putting them at more of a competitive disadvantage to neighboring regions. It is the consequence of some rather narrow thinking of politicians convinced of their own righteousness.

Governor Nathan Deal — truth be told — never liked the T-SPLOST idea. He was a team player and wound up on the losing side of a plan he never much cared for to begin with. The ball is now in his court and he has the opportunity to both restore trust and have a more tremendous impact on the state than his last two predecessors, neither of whom have left much of a legacy.

In doing so, the Governor’s first step should not be to come up with a plan.

Governor Deal’s first step should be to change the attitude of the political leaders in the state, from the Republican leadership to the army of high paid lobbyists and lawyers on Peachtree to the Chamber of Commerce. These people ooze contempt for the average voter.

Read more here: http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/08/01/arrogance/