ATLANTA – An environmental organization is urging Gov. Brian Kemp to veto a bill the General Assembly passed overwhelmingly that would reserve a permanent spot in the state budget for freight rail.
The Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club supports stepping up investments in freight rail to relieve some of the truck traffic on the state’s highways.
But House Bill 820 should be vetoed because it could be used to steer state funding to privately owned “short-line” freight railroads, not just those owned by the state, Mark Woodall, chairman of the Georgia Sierra Club’s legislative committee, wrote in a letter to the governor. Allowing public money to go to private rail carriers would violate the Georgia Constitution’s “gratuities clause,” Woodall wrote.
“The short-line railroads that are owned by the state and leased to operators should not be competing with profitable private carriers for limited state funds,” he wrote. “Legislation on this topic must be explicit in prohibiting such misuse of these monies.”
Georgia has the longest network of active rail lines in the Southeast, covering more than 4,600 miles.
Both House Bill 820 and an identical measure introduced in the Georgia Senate passed the Senate unanimously during this year’s legislative session and cleared the state House of Representatives with just one “no” vote.
While the state has helped support maintaining short-line railroads on an intermittent basis, there is no ongoing line item in annual state budgets for freight rail.
“We’ve got to look for ways to get this freight off of our interstates and state highways,” said Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, the Senate bill’s chief sponsor. “There’s a role for the state in infrastructure investment.”
But in light of the state’s current budget crunch, the $25.9 billion fiscal 2021 budget lawmakers adopted last month does not include any funding for freight rail. The General Assembly cut state spending by $2.2 billion to help offset the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, leaving little room for new appropriations.
“[The legislation] creates a placeholder in the budget so that, as funding is identified, they have a place to start in the budget,” Josh Waller, director of policy and government affairs for the Georgia Department of Transportation, told members of the State Transportation Board Thursday.
Gooch said the two bills address the concerns brought up in the Sierra Club letter. He pointed to a provision in the measures requiring the Georgia commissioner of transportation to make sure any state funding of freight rail is for “a substantial public benefit” in compliance with the state constitution.
“Anything we do would have to pass the legal test,” Gooch said.
Waller said he doesn’t anticipate encountering any opposition from Kemp to signing the freight rail bill or any of the other DOT-requested legislation the General Assembly passed this year.