GDOT Commissioner Gena Evans fired
February 26, 2009 at 4:50 pm by Thomas Wheatley in News
Correction appended
The Georgia Department of Transportation fired Commissioner Gena Evans today.
Boardmembers offered Evans, the beleaguered state agency’s first female commissioner, the option of resigning or being fired. The source said she did not want to resign. Boardmember Brandon Beach of Johns Creek made the motion and was seconded by David Doss of Rome. The final vote was 9-1-1 8-2-1. Board Chairman Bill Kuhlke and Vice Chairman Larry Walker voted against firing Evans. Boardmember Robert Brown of Decatur abstained.
Chief Engineer Gerald Ross will serve as interim commissioner while a nationwide search for a replacement is conducted.
Gov. Sonny Perdue has proposed a massive reorganization of the state’s transportation agencies. Under his proposal, the department would be gutted.
More details to come.
(Photo courtesy of MARTA)
February 27th, 2009 at 1:59 am
Talk about a morality booster… :) :)
February 27th, 2009 at 7:25 am
It is widely expected among the DOT folks that Sonny Perdue plans to appoint Gena Evans as the new Secretary of Transportation once power is given over to Purdue, Casey Cagle, and the Speaker. The rather corrupt way our transportation funds are allocated will continue. I have no faith in Evans to be in charge of this, especially since her experience is NOT IN TRANSPORTATION. Once she took office, she gave Purdue what he wanted by equating the DOT’s funding methods to bad accounting, and freezing projects large and small across the state, contributing the the economic slowdown. Now Purdue, Evans and Cagle (Richardson was given a bit of a bone on this one) will have complete control. With Cagle’s likely election as the next Governor, expect Evans, with her preachy and hypocritical management style, to be in power over something she has no business managing for a long time to come. She needs to stay at her lake house in Alabama.
February 27th, 2009 at 11:55 am
was any reason given for the firing?
February 27th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
That’s on the way, Wesley.
February 27th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Perdue has totally been asleep at the wheel on transportation issues in Georgia. Why should we have any confidence in his new plan since he hasn’t done squat about transportation in 6 years?
February 27th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
This was a much needed move by the Transportation Board. Evans was apparently brought in for one reason. To break the DOT, once thought to be the most powerful branch of Government in Georgia because of the preceived lack of accountability to the people. With Purdue’s long history as a State Employee and political Capitol Hiller, he was eager to change that as Governer. He seiged the opportunity when given by planting this poor unsuspecting woman in this position. She is not an engineer by was preceived as a Manager that would be able to “Clean House” What a flop and failure, and not the DOT will be forever in attempting to recover from this awful mess.
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:38 am
Good riddance. GDOT has problems but she did not seem to an effective solution.
I remember when she sent almost every district office downtown basically to listen to her explain how her position was not related to her (at the time)boyfriend. Good grief, vanloads of people form all over had to suffer through that.
GDOT has good people and does a good job considering what they have to deal with, but there is plenty of fat to be trimmed.
March 4th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Dear Lawmaker,
There appears to be a campaign to destroy the Georgia Department of
Transportation. Georgia as a whole is wrestling with declining revenues including transportation taxes and increasing transportation needs brought on by Georgia‘s attractiveness as a place to work and live. Georgia DOT has not had its funding methods increased since 1979
when the State Legislature allowed the state sales tax on motor fuel (3
cents) to go to the Department. In fact the popular LARP program
started in 1979 with $29 million dollars and is the same size today without any inflationary increases. If the gasoline tax had been
indexed for inflation, it would be 43 cents per gallon today. If the
state budget had grown with the rate of inflation and unfunded
Washington mandates not included, it would be $3.5 billion instead of
$20 billion.
There are critics that say Georgia DOT is broken and unable to provide
quality transportation infrastructure. One of the solutions offered to
improving transportation in Georgia is to reduce the size of Georgia DOT
and reduce the number of projects planned for construction in the
future. It is a good move to rid the program of politically generated
projects that are too expensive and don’t solve transportation needs.
However, regarding the need for downsizing the workforce, Georgia DOT
has been downsizing the staffing levels since 1972. Still Georgia DOT
is the 4th largest agency as far as personnel levels are concerned.
Implementation of the Transportation program in Georgia requires a
minimal staffing level. In 1972, there were 9110 people working for the
Georgia Department of Transportation. The agency had a total budget of
approximately $300 million dollars. Over the next 10 years the numbers
were reduced to approximately 6200 and today the number hovers near
5500. Also during this timeframe, the cost of personal services at the
Georgia DOT has increased far less than the Georgia Budget or the rate
of inflation. In the years after reorganization and when Tom Moreland
was Commissioner, through attrition, without laying off anyone,
personnel levels at GDOT fell by more than 2000 in 1974. The savings
from the reduction in personnel was used to fund actual construction
projects. The period from 1973 to 1981 saw personnel levels decrease 28
percent, while at other state agencies, the number of positions
increased by 32 percent. Personal Services Payrolls at these other
agencies jumped 132% while GDOT jumped only 41% during this time of high
inflation. Since 1972 Georgia DOT has seen a reduction in personnel/staff of 40%.
I challenge you to find another state agency in Georgia that has
decreased the number of employees, while continuing to take on
additional mandated tasks and responsibilities, and done them with the
success of the Georgia DOT. Also name an agency that has managed to
keep personnel cost down from 1972 to today to a rate of growth of less
than 2 percent per year! While the Georgia DOT workforce numbers fewer
than the workforce of 1964, the transportation assets of Georgia have
grown threefold. Today, GDOT produces three times the volume of
transportation infrastructure compared to 1964. Simply put, Georgia DOT
is doing nearly triple the production of that done in 1964 with fewer
employees and the personnel costs have not exceeded the consumer price
index for the 45 years!!! At the same time, Georgia’s state budget has
grown tremendously.
With the growth of the past, the state route system in Georgia has been
improved, meaning additional lane miles have been added. DOT has seen a
growth in the lane miles in the state route system of 270% from 1964 to
date. These “assets” have to be maintained just as the original lanes
were; however, the number of employees and resources doing that
maintenance is less than it was 45 years ago. The legislature will
ponder decisions about budgets and people, and they should consider
these facts about transportation funding and Georgia’s future transportation direction.
In 1964, 22% of the State Budget was devoted to Transportation in
Georgia; today it is 4%.
Since 1964, the entire state budget has grown from about $ 522 Million
to $20 billion.
Since 1964, the Consumer Price Index has grown nearly 700%.
The Georgia DOT Expenditures including construction projects was roughly
400 million dollars in 1964, and that included funds that were committed
but not yet disbursed.
Today, the Georgia DOT Expenditures amount to roughly 2 billion dollars, over twice the inflation-adjusted amount that was spent in 1964.
The GDOT workforce in 1964 cost the taxpayers $36.305 million dollars.
The GDOT workforce in 2009, which is made up of more college-educated
professionals than that of 1964, will cost the taxpayers $302.5 million
dollars. This is about the same as the Consumer Price Index for that
time period.
Georgia’s population has grown threefold since 1964.
Funding from motor fuel taxes has remained stagnant since the early
1970s. Although in 1979 the sales tax, 3 of 4 cents was dedicated to
transportation spending.
The lane miles that the Georgia DOT maintains has grown from 17826 miles
in 1964 to 47648 miles today, an expansion of 2.7 times.
If Personal Services were adjusted for inflation since 1972, they would
be $490 million dollars instead of the $302.5 million dollars that they
are today.
Like other public agencies, Georgia DOT is looking at outsourcing
additional sectors of the Department’s functions in order to save
taxpayer dollars. In fact, for most of the past 30 years, over 75% of
expenditures were for capital projects, most of which were constructed
by private contractors. During the past 30 plus years, Georgia has
earned and been given several national awards for the excellent
transportation system that has been developed and improved upon in our
state.
Finally, since reforms in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Georgia DOT has been
operated with Board Members being selected by the respective
congressional district legislative members and Commissioners selected
by those Board Members. Under legislation being considered that would
change. The Governor, Lt. Governor and Speaker of the House would make
these selections and by doing so turn back the clock more than a half
century. The citizens and taxpayers of Georgia would lose under this
proposal. Local legislators would lose any control or voice regarding
the make up of the Transportation Board or the Commissioner of
Transportation. Part of the past success of the Georgia DOT in
building first class transportation infrastructure has been the way that
the Board is selected and Commissioner is appointed. Georgia DOT has
seen growth in the transportation system that has made Georgia one of
the finest State Transportation Agencies in the nation. All of this has
been done on a gasoline tax and sales tax that has not been indexed for
inflation, nor has it taken into account the increased costs of programs
such as Fast Forward, the Governors Road Improvement Program, Paving the
Way Home and other largely unfunded, but directed transportation
initiatives.
I urge you to consider these facts when making decisions this legislative season regarding transportation in Georgia.