The read

From my Sunday column in the Athens Banner-Herald ...

There's plenty of promise with Millar's proposal, but it also should be viewed with some skepticism. The Georgia General Assembly, despite four years of haggling, still can't reach consensus on how best to fund transportation needs, and the proposal to let the governor pick and choose the MARTA director unnecessarily politicizes the position.

In addition, folks should exercise caution with the premise of handing over the largest transit system in the state to a conservative-heavy group of legislators who have shown an uncanny knack for divorcing themselves from the Republican Party's stated support for local control and resorted to heavy-handed tactics to compel local entities to behave in a certain way.

Last year, Republican legislators killed a measure that would have given MARTA more leeway in how it spent its sales tax revenue because various Democratic representatives refused to vote for an unrelated bill that capped local property tax assessments.

On Oct. 10, state Rep. Jill Chambers, R-Atlanta, told members of MARTA's governing board via e-mail that if anyone voted for funding options she disagreed with, there might be political retribution in the form of the elimination of the supporters' seats on the board.

And, just last week, state Rep. Earl Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, took to conservative blog Peach Pundit to again call for state interference in MARTA governance. His concerns were that MARTA's board is too big, and its members were making decisions and requests he simply didn't like.

All the while, MARTA is struggling to survive as it balances increased ridership with sagging revenues - it is facing an $85 million deficit for 2010.