McMurry Named GDOT Commissioner as Golden Retires, State Officials Seek Revenue

Georgia’s State Transportation Board on Jan. 20 picked Russell McMurry to immediately take the helm of the Department of Transportation, after Commissioner Keith Golden announced plans to retire at the end of January.

 McMurry

That pulled McMurry, a former GDOT chief engineer, into the agency’s CEO chair after a short time as Gov. Nathan Deal’s choice for GDOT planning director. The 14-member board voted unanimously to elect McMurry.

McMurry, who has been with GDOT for 25 years, became chief engineer at the start of 2013. Last November, Deal selected him to be the agency’s planning chief.

Golden, a 27-year GDOT veteran, had led the agency from September 2011, first as interim commissioner and then as commissioner since March 2012.

This change in agency leadership comes as Gov. Deal has been pushing for the legislature to come up with new revenues to pay for transportation improvements. In his Jan. 14 “State of the State” address, Deal urged lawmakers to “ensure that our network of bridges, roads and other vital infrastructure are well maintained and that the increasing transportation needs of our population are met.”

Deal said the state’s excise tax on motor fuel has been unchanged since 1971, even as average vehicle fuel efficiency has almost doubled and nearly cut in half the tax take per miles traveled. “According to industry experts, simply maintaining what we currently have on our roadways requires a minimum of hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue each year,” he said. “Some industry experts even suggest it’s more than $1 billion a year.”

 Golden

Golden reportedly sent GDOT employees a message on Jan. 16, telling them he’d notified the State Transportation Board two days earlier of his plans to leave.

In that message, he noted he had become eligible to retire during 2014, but wanted to complete work with the Joint Transportation Infrastructure Study Committee as it tried to craft options for increasing transportation funding. That panel wrapped up its work the last day of December, Golden said, with a menu of choices for lawmakers to consider.