I get a daily email from Governing magazine that highlights a wide spectrum of government issues from around the United States and the world. I always take a quick glance at the headline links, even if I don’t have much time to read the stories at the moment. If it’s interesting, I’ll come back to it later.
An interesting link grabbed my attention this morning. It was titled “The Mixed Message on Suburban Light Rail”. City staff happen to be involved in the early stages of a County-driven plan to extend a light rail line into Eden Prairie. The link took me not to a news story about suburban light rail, but to a nugget from the December 7, 2007 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper.
If you’re a government person reading this blog, please take a very close look at the following “news” nugget. Read it carefully and consider whether it really says what you think it says:
Portion of Gwinnett County, Ga., voters who, according to a new poll, support bringing a Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) light-rail line to the suburban county, which voted resoundingly in 1990 to reject a MARTA extension: Two-thirds.
Portion of those polled who support imposing a new tax, half for roads and half for rail: 34%
On first read, it’s tempting for those of us in government to look at this juxtaposition of information and fall back into the comfort of “Sounds about right. The public wants it, but they’re not willing to pay for it.” But is that what these two pieces of information really say? Here’s what I see:
Two-thirds of Gwinnett County voters support the extension of light rail from Atlanta to their suburban county. A high percentage of Gwinnett County voters opposed the extension of light rail to their county 17 years ago. That was, I’ll repeat, 17 years ago. There has been rapid suburbanization of the Atlanta metro area during the past 17 years. It’s highly likely that the composition of the electorate that “resoundingly” (by the way, how many people against or for something qualifies as “resoundingly”? They must know if it was a referendum. Why did the paper decide not to include that small, but potentially important fact?) defeated the extension of light rail 17 years ago is very different than the composition of the county today. It’s probably a lot of people who moved out to the suburban county and commute back into the city for work. As more and more that happened, traffic got worse. Atlanta has one of the worst traffic congestion problems in America. Now that traffic is bad, two-thirds of Gwinnett County residents see the MARTA light rail line as a potentially good solution to their traffic problems.
The second part of this nugget wants you to think that Gwinnett County residents want something, but that they’re not willing to pay support a new tax to pay for it. Does that really mean that Gwinnett County residents want something but they’re not willing to pay for it? Maybe. But maybe not. I don’t think there is enough data presented to us in this nuggetized format to form the conclusion that voters want something for nothing. For example, maybe the two-thirds of those who do not support a new tax don’t want a new tax. Maybe the new tax itself is the issue. Maybe it’s a new property tax? Maybe they support the increase of an existing tax, like a gas tax, to fund light rail extensions. Or, maybe they support the idea of higher user fees on train tickets to support the line. We don’t know that from the nugget presented to us.
I’ve only worked in government for 19 years, and all of that has been at the local level. During that time I’ve come to learn many things about human nature as it relates to government. Two things come to mind this morning. People don’t generally support taxes. They’ll grumble about them, but they’ll pay them, and they’ll use and sometimes appreciate the public services they pay for. But asking taxpayers to “support” taxes is almost always asking a dumb question.
The other observation is that people aren’t stupid. 17 years ago the residents of Gwinnett County, Georgia did not see that a light rail into the city was in their best interest. You know what? It probably wasn’t. But now times have changed and Gwinnett County residents see that light rail is in their best interest now. They see that and they want it. The fact that Gwinnett County voters thought something different about light rail in 1990 than they think about the same subject in 2007 should not be used to take a shot at suburban voters today.
This is as true in suburban Twin Cities as it is in suburban Atlanta.
