One of the most high-profile business leaders in Cobb County is organizing a rally on Thursday against the Cobb transit tax referendum that’s on the November ballot.
The event includes a press conference that is scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday at Cobb-Marietta Transit Center (811 S. Marietta Parkway), and is being organized by John Loud.
A press release sent out Tuesday afternoon said the press conference will include Cobb Republican state legislators John Carson and Ginny Ehrhart “and other Cobb County business leaders” who were not identified.
Loud is the founder of Loud Security Systems and is a former president of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce. He was a key figure in efforts to lure the Atlanta Braves to Cobb County in 2013.
He has become more active politically recently, recruiting Republican candidates John Cristadoro (Cobb Board of Education Post 4) and Kay Morgan (Cobb Commission Chair) to run for office in 2024.
What’s being called the Cobb Mobility SPLOST, if approved by voters in the referendum, raise the current sales tax totals in Cobb County from six to seven cents on the dollar.
The transit tax would collect a one-percent Special-Purpose Local-Option Sales Tax for 30 years (more than $11 billion) to expand bus service in Cobb County, including 108 new miles of routes as well as construction of transfer stations and expansion of microtransit and other related services.
In a social media post Monday, Loud called the tax “such a waste of money” and said the county hasn’t been transparent on ridership figures and how the money would be spent.
The MDJ has reported that ridership across the overall Cobb bus system has plummeted from 3.7 million annual trips in 2014 to just under 1 million trips in 2022, and that the decline began well before COVID-19.
Cobb commissioners voted in a 3-2 partisan vote in June to put the tax out for a referendum. It’s the longest and most ambitious sales tax in Cobb County, and Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid has frequently defended both in public statements.
“What it comes down to is do we perceive the future is worth it?” she said before the vote in June. “We can do something that is transformational . . . it enhances our ability to serve our own citizens.”
Loud said in a social media post Monday that while he supports the current sales taxes to finance Cobb County government and Cobb County School District construction and maintenance projects, “this M-SPLOST, for public transportation is nothing like the others.”
The existing SPLOSTs have been approved since the late 1990s for shorter periods (typically four to six years), have committed project lists and citizen oversight committees.
If the Mobility SPLOST passes, he claimed on the Vote NO M-SPLOST Facebook page he created, that “future elected officials can make all sorts of changes and use these funds in all sorts of ways as there is no committed full list of how these [BILLION$ Lisa Cupid] will be spent.”
Among the proposed projects that would be funded with the transit tax is the construction of a bus transfer station in the Roswell-Johnson Ferry Road area and the restoration of two bus routes through East Cobb that were eliminated during recession budget cuts.
Loud claimed that nearly $300,000 of taxpayer money has been diverted for “an education campaign” to inform voters about the referendum, and that Cupid “pressured” Community Improvement Districts to spend around $260,000 on “education initiatives” for the tax.
The former figure is around $287,000 that’s being paid to Kimley-Horn, an Atlanta consulting firm, to build an informational web site for the tax and to hold open houses.
The latter reference includes around $100,000 in contributions by the Cumberland CID and around $110,000 by the Town Center CID, per the MDJ.
The county cannot officially make an endorsement on the tax, but a sentence on the SPLOST “overview” page states that “this initiative seeks to improve the county’s transit infrastructure with a focus on safety, flexibility, and reliability tailored to meet the specific needs of our growing community and local economy.”
More than 200 people have joined the Facebook page started by Loud and Carson, and some are fellow GOP elected officials and conservative activists.
Opposition also has come from the Cobb Taxpayer Association, which held a rally in East Cobb last month.
The Cobb Business Alliance, made up of companies in the construction industry, has also launched a website that it says is informational only.
However, the CBA sent out media and other invitations to its campaign kickoff in support of the tax, and that Cupid attended.
And the MDJ reported last week that a CBA poll shows that two-thirds of respondents don’t even know there’s a transit tax vote coming up.
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The two community improvement districts are government bodies created by the General Assembly and enabled by the Board of Commissioners. Like the county government, they cannot use their resources to promote passage of the referendum.