ATLANTA – A bill tweaking a transportation project contracting option Georgia lawmakers authorized in 2021 will likely be among the first to hit the floor of either legislative chamber in a slow-moving start to the 2023 session.
The House Transportation Committee passed the bill unanimously on Thursday and sent it on to the Rules Committee, which will decide when to put in on the House floor.
The General Assembly passed legislation two years ago allowing the state Department of Transportation (DOT) to use a contracting alternative that gets contractors involved in projects as they are being designed, earlier than is typically the case.
“This is really for more complex projects,” Rep. Brad Thomas, R-Holly Springs, the bill’s chief sponsor, told committee members Thursday. “It allows for better control of estimates.”
“You don’t have to deal with change orders,” added Josh Waller, director of policy and government affairs for the DOT.
Waller said an example of a complex project is the planned raising of the Talmadge Bridge in Savannah. The State Transportation Board voted last week to authorize using alternative contracting to build that project.
Alternative contracting also works well when a project needs to be completed quickly, such as the replacement of the Courtland Street Bridge in downtown Atlanta, Waller said. That work several years ago was shortened from an originally anticipated two years to just six months.
Neill Herring, a lobbyist for the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club, complained that the tweaks in the new bill added to the 2021 law include vague wording that would give the DOT too much discretion.
One addition to the earlier bill adds the language “otherwise authorized rules and regulations of the department” to a portion of the legislation specifying the procurement procedures that must be used in connection with alternative contracts.
Another provision allows the DOT board by majority vote to waive a portion of the 2021 bill that prohibits the agency from encumbering more than 5% of its capital budget on a single project.
This year’s legislation retains a provision from the 2021 bill aimed at making sure the DOT doesn’t overuse alternative contracting. It allows the department to deliver no more than two projects using alternative contracting during any single fiscal year and no more than seven projects during any 10-year period.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.