SB 200 could also provide more opportunities for corruption and political meddling in the awarding of lucrative highway construction contracts.
Tom Crawford of Capitol Impact has some scray thoughts that come from one place. His ability to accurately predict the future. This week he writes:
[O]ur elected representatives didn’t accomplish much, with one exception. They did pass a bill, SB 200, that could have an enormous impact on state politics and the balance of power at the capitol for many years to come.
SB 200 will drastically revamp the Department of Transportation, shifting much of the power over the agency’s $2 billion yearly budget to the governor and, to a lesser extent, the legislators. The office of governor, already one of the strongest in the country, becomes that much more powerful with the ability to control which highways get built and which do not.
There could be a darker side here: by turning over so much power to the governor and the General Assembly, SB 200 could also provide more opportunities for corruption and political meddling in the awarding of lucrative highway construction contracts. Those were the factors that prompted Gov. Carl Sanders to put the current DOT structure in place in the 1960s.
SB 200 creates a new position at DOT, planning director, that will be filled by the governor. The planning director will have the most important job at DOT because he or she will draw up the list of highway projects authorized for construction, subject to review by the governor.
After the governor has refined the project list, the General Assembly then chooses the projects it wants to fund, so long as the total amount spent on them doesn’t exceed 20 percent of the available funds. By controlling what’s on the list of transportation projects, the governor will have a very big stick for threatening lawmakers who aren’t voting his way on other legislation.
Perdue’s ultimate goal in getting SB 200 adopted may be to facilitate the awarding of major contracts to private companies that want to take over the construction and management of public highways in Georgia. One of the world’s leading private developers of toll roads is Cintra, an international conglomerate based in Spain. Cintra has built and operated such major American highways as the Chicago Skyway and the Indiana Toll Road.
When Perdue flew to Spain last September with a contingent of business leaders - at the same time that Georgia motorists were struggling to cope with a severe gasoline shortage - one of the companies he met with was Cintra. That could be the ultimate legacy of SB 200 - Georgians paying high tolls to drive on highways owned by a European conglomerate. You heard it here first.
[O]ur elected representatives didn’t accomplish much, with one exception. They did pass a bill, SB 200, that could have an enormous impact on state politics and the balance of power at the capitol for many years to come.
SB 200 will drastically revamp the Department of Transportation, shifting much of the power over the agency’s $2 billion yearly budget to the governor and, to a lesser extent, the legislators. The office of governor, already one of the strongest in the country, becomes that much more powerful with the ability to control which highways get built and which do not.
There could be a darker side here: by turning over so much power to the governor and the General Assembly, SB 200 could also provide more opportunities for corruption and political meddling in the awarding of lucrative highway construction contracts. Those were the factors that prompted Gov. Carl Sanders to put the current DOT structure in place in the 1960s.
SB 200 creates a new position at DOT, planning director, that will be filled by the governor. The planning director will have the most important job at DOT because he or she will draw up the list of highway projects authorized for construction, subject to review by the governor.
After the governor has refined the project list, the General Assembly then chooses the projects it wants to fund, so long as the total amount spent on them doesn’t exceed 20 percent of the available funds. By controlling what’s on the list of transportation projects, the governor will have a very big stick for threatening lawmakers who aren’t voting his way on other legislation.
Perdue’s ultimate goal in getting SB 200 adopted may be to facilitate the awarding of major contracts to private companies that want to take over the construction and management of public highways in Georgia. One of the world’s leading private developers of toll roads is Cintra, an international conglomerate based in Spain. Cintra has built and operated such major American highways as the Chicago Skyway and the Indiana Toll Road.
When Perdue flew to Spain last September with a contingent of business leaders - at the same time that Georgia motorists were struggling to cope with a severe gasoline shortage - one of the companies he met with was Cintra. That could be the ultimate legacy of SB 200 - Georgians paying high tolls to drive on highways owned by a European conglomerate. You heard it here first.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 2:31 PM
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