Fresh Loaf

Maria Saporta sends word that the Georgia Department of Transportation has scaled back its  division that oversees rail programs in the state.

Vance Smith, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Transportation, distributed a memo on Thursday, Oct. 15 announcing “organizational changes” in his department.

“Over the last few months, we have worked diligently to strategically reorganize the Department to achieve greater efficiency in both functional alignment and program delivery,” Smith wrote in the memo.

He then released the new organization chart which diminishes the role of transit and intermodal transportation in the department.

That’s a sad sign. Georgia’s been sitting on federal funding for years that could kickstart a commuter rail line from Atlanta to Griffin. And just last month, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood publicly criticized the state for dragging its feet on rail.

Check out Saporta’s full report for more details and a copy of Smith’s memo.

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Planning Director Todd Long

The man who’ll help Georgians stop dying slow painful deaths sitting in gridlock was unanimously confirmed this morning as the state’s first transportation planning director.

Todd Long, a transportation-planning veteran who was nominated to the post by Gov. Sonny Perdue, faced final questions from the House Transportation Committee this morning.

The planning director position was created during a Perdue-helmed overhaul of Georgia’s transportation power hierarchy earlier this year. The governor had originally proposed neutering the state Department of Transportation and placing decision-making power in the hands of a new state agency — an agency largely overseen by himself.

State lawmakers, clever jackals that they are, rewrote most of the proposal near the end of the legislative session. What came out leaves GDOT intact but created the transportation planning director position.

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State auditors have discovered what they call evidence of “possible financial statement fraud” and questionable accounting practices at the Georgia Department of Transportation during two years of former Treasurer Earl Mahfuz’s tenure.

According to a 54-page report released Monday, Mahfuz, who was demoted last year to assistant treasurer, “was responsible for the decision to implement business process changes at GDOT [between 2005 and 2007] that he knew would violate the Georgia Constitution.”

Those changes involved GDOT letting road projects even if it lacked the money to do so. The audit notes that the state Constitution has strict requirements when it comes to the state incurring debt.

The audit says the accounting practices might have helped mask GDOT’s budget deficit. It also says GDOT’s upper management and top boardmembers often butted heads with each other and that a general mistrust existed between the agency and the governor’s office. These factors helped create an operating environment that auditors say was “dysfunctional to the extent that GDOT was ripe for fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement.”

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The state Transportation Board this morning unanimously elected state Rep. Vance Smith, R-Pine Mountain, as the new Georgia Department of Transportation commissioner. Once he resigns from the Gold Dome, Smith’s expected to move into GDOT offices on June 25th.

What exactly Smith’s duties will be is rather murky. Earlier this year, the Georgia General Assembly passed a bill pushed by Gov. Sonny Perdue that restructured the transportation planning power structure. Whereas previously the DOT board called the shots, now most of the people-moving decision-making will be made by a planning director appointed by the governor. It wasn’t what Perdue originally wanted, but he signed the bill. The governor hasn’t named his planning director pick. (UPDATE: Dick Pettys of Insider Advantage reports just now that Perdue has named Todd Long, formerly or DOT and the Georgia Regional Transporation Authority, as planning director.)

Pettys also reports that there was some debate among boardmembers over how to interpret the governance reform bill, but that they’ve decided to hold off until all the pieces of the bureaucratic puzzle come together.

In a released statement, Smith says the state and DOT must work together to finally solve Georgia’s transportation woes. He adds that the deep-in-the-red department sorely needs new funding. During his time under the Gold Dome, Smith pushed for a statewide one-cent sales tax that would fund new roads, bridges and transit. Like all transportation funding proposals in the Legislature, it never passed.

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…that’s not the real story.

The veteran political reporter’s sources say the state agency wants to avoid ending the fiscal year with a deficit, possibly by tapping $75 million in federal funding. There’s also the question over what exactly Senate Bill 200, a piece of legislation that shakes up Georgia’s transportation power structure, means for GDOT.

At the same time – and this is where it gets interesting – talks have been underway between the DOT staff and the governor’s office over how to implement SB 200, the governance reform bill that gives the governor (through the new planning director) and the Legislature (through new budget authority) broader control over DOT. There are some loose ends that the bill does not address.

Some believe the two issues have become entangled in something of a quid pro quo, with the governor holding both a carrot (the bailout money) and a stick (the new rules which dissidents believe give the planning director – and through the planning director, Perdue – more power over issues like public-private partnerships and funding allocation formulas than the law stipulates.)

Others don’t see any such entanglement, but this week’s meeting should be interesting nonetheless. Even if there is no suspense about the new commissioner.

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Business blogger Maria Saporta reports state Rep. Vance Smith, R-Pine Mountain, seems to be the most likely candidate to be named the next Georgia Department of Transportation commissioner.

Smith, chairman of the House transportation committee, has been interested in the DOT job for nearly two years, and it appears he will get his wish.

The deadline for applications from people interested in the DOT job was today at 5 p.m.

Word has it that Smith’s top two potential competitors did not apply for the job, meaning that he is the last man standing.

Saporta reports one of those competitors, Georgia Regional Transportation Authority Executive Director Dick Anderson, decided to stick with GRTA to try to implement the governor’s recently completed statewide transportation plan. Interim GDOT Commissioner Gerald Ross is rumored to return to his position as chief engineer.

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Many people’s eyes rolled when state Rep. Vance Smith was announced as the chief competition to Gena Abraham in the GDOT commissioner race — after all, he owns a construction and grading company, and that meant he would bulldoze and build mercilessly, right? But he very well could have been a saving grace for a region lacking in transit options and awash in pavement. Abraham, who was approved on Wednesday as commissioner-elect, also comes from a construction background but has experience in engineering and academia, and as of late, has been touting public-private initiatives — calling them “definitely something we have to do” at a press Q&A yesterday. PPIs the DOT is currently pursuing or considering involve roads and lanes rather than rails and trains.

Which made this little snippet from Dick Pettys’ InsiderAdvantage Georgia piece from yesterday interesting …

For sure, Democrats are just as mad. They had thrown in with the Republican leadership in an effort to sway the election to [state Rep. Vance] Smith, who had promised to give due consideration to some of their key transportation goals – mass transit and multi-modal operations for Atlanta.

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