Retailers eyed to help fund rest stops

By Ashley Speagle

Correspondent

ATLANTA -- Legislators advanced several measures Tuesday they say may help save, better manage and more quickly allocate transportation dollars.

Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, received Senate approval to urge the Georgia Department of Transportation to ask the Federal Highway Administration to allow retail development at state rest stops.

"This will ask the Federal Highway Administration to give us a waiver to lease rest areas to the retail market," Sen. Mullis said. "This will help us to use private dollars to maintain our rest areas."

The move could ease the state's cost to maintain rest stops, he said. Figures released Monday show state revenues are down almost 10 percent from the same month in 2009, the 15th straight month of decline.

Sen. Mullis said many European rest areas allow the private market to assume those costs, but added that motor fuel would not be sold at Georgia rest stops.

Another legislator's bill attempted to untangle overlapping oversight of transportation money.

Sen. Doug Stoner, D-Smyrna, got his bill through the Senate to create a Georgia Coordinating Committee for Rural and Human Services Transportation.

The committee would oversee transportation spending currently implemented by different agencies, which Sen. Stoner said is a confusing, overly complicated system.

"The idea is to have all six agencies to figure out a better way to leverage our transportation dollars," Sen. Stoner said.

In the House, Rep. Jay Roberts, R-Ocilla, presented a bill that could put more transportation projects in motion by allowing GDOT to spend money it doesn't have on hand.

Rep. Roberts' bill would allow the department to enter multiyear contracts that would obligate future funds.

Earlier this session, the Senate Transportation Committee urged GDOT to reverse a decision to allow accrual accounting, but Rep. Roberts said the method speeds up transportation development.

The House and Senate bills will be sent to their opposite chambers now, and the Senate resolution will go to the transportation department for its consideration.