A state legislative committee tasked with overseeing MARTA held a public hearing Wednesday on a bill seeking to restructure the transit agency.
Among the proposed reforms include mandatory privatization of major MARTA functions, employee pension reform, and a reduction of the agency’s debt ceiling.
The committee meeting at times was contentious, particularly between MARTA employee union chief Curtis Howard and State Representative Mike Jacobs (R – Brookhaven), who chairs the oversight committee, and is also the bill’s sponsor.
Jacobs grilled Howard over a set of union flyers claiming the bill would lead to full-out privatization of MARTA.
“This flyer…is being handed to people stepping off of buses, regular MARTA buses and regular trains, at the Five Points MARTA station and it tells a lie about the provisions of the bill,” said Jacobs.
Jacobs fiercely argued the bill doesn’t seek to outsource rail and bus service, but State Senator Vincent Fort (D – Atlanta) said the bill is clearly a means to that end.
“To intimate this isn’t about privatization…it’s not in your bill except for paratransit and that’s enough for me,” said Fort. “Let’s be very clear there are people…who are only [at the meeting] because they want to – after the privatizing of the back office – they want to move into the privatizing of the buses and rail service.”
What Jacobs did concede was the need to amend a separate provision mandating major cutbacks to employee pension and health benefits.
“We’re likely to be more advisory and less prescriptive as the bill moves through the Senate,” said Jacobs.
He said the move is based on recent discussions with federal labor officials. Jacobs said they expressed concerns the proposed mandates violated federal collective bargaining rules. That’s something MARTA union members had been arguing since the bill was proposed.
Meanwhile, new MARTA chief Keith Parker, who has mostly declined public comment during the legislative process, came out against a provision in the bill seeking to lower the debt ceiling for the agency.
“If we have a prescriptive measure like this, it does not give us the opportunity to be as flexible as we need to be in a given year,” said Parker.
The MARTA overhaul bill has so far cleared the House and is likely due for a Senate committee hearing next week.
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