Clayton County officials are hoping Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff can help the south metro Atlanta community recover $18 million to its bank accounts.
Warnock and Ossoff recently introduced a federal bill that would allow Clayton to resume collections of fuel taxes from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which is operated by the city of Atlanta but is located mostly in Clayton County.
For more than two decades, Clayton received millions in funding from the taxes, most recently getting $9 million for the county school system and $9 million for the county government and Clayton’s seven cities.
But a 2014 Federal Aviation Administration policy mandated all revenue from air travel fees must go back to airports for infrastructure, operations and other airfield needs.
“When you are in a pandemic and you don’t have a consistent funding source, it makes it difficult for you to continue to provide the requisite services to citizens,” Clayton County Chief Operating Office Detrick Stanford said.
Clayton, like many metro Atlanta communities, struggled early on in the pandemic as revenues fell, especially as fewer people shopped or dined out, new business license fees dried up and MARTA saw its ridership drop.
The county is slowing recovering, but it has needed millions in federal aid to help residents with rental assistance and small businesses to stay open.
Clayton lost access to the jet fuel taxes in 2018 when Georgia cut off the spigot after the FAA said it would no longer grant extensions to the funding. Former Gov. Nathan Deal gave Clayton County about $27 million — three years of its $9 million annual collections — to fill the gap while the community sought different sources.
Delta Air Lines, which paid the bulk of the jet fuel taxes because of its dominance at the airport, gave the school system a total of about $16 million in monthly payments through the end of 2019 to help ease the transition.
“Delta remains Clayton County’s largest taxpayer and in 2020 paid $26 million in property taxes to the county,” a spokeswoman for the airline said. “In addition, Delta pays approximately $10 million in county sales tax to Clayton County annually.”
Clayton Commissioner Felicia Franklin said the tax was a way to balance the impact the world’s busiest airport has on the county. Clayton does not collect property taxes on the facility because it is a municipal building, but is responsible for housing and prosecuting crimes committed at the airport because they take place in the county.
“Every time the airport has expanded, we’re losing tax revenue,” she said of potential property fees. “We get taxes from the businesses outside the airport, but not the concessions inside.”
Daniel Franklin, an associate professor of political science emeritus at Georgia State University, said both sides have good arguments, but it’s difficult to restore funding once it’s been cut.
“I think Clayton is going to have trouble prevailing,” he said.
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