The northwest Georgia city had been running the buses for about 30-40 years, the city manager said. Until six years ago, Rome’s students rode in 28 white-painted and blue-striped “tripper” buses bought with Federal Transit Administration funds.

But then a 2019 audit by the Georgia Department of Transportation turned up bad news: That money wasn’t supposed to be for school bus service, but for regular bus service. The state informed FTA. 

“I don’t exactly understand where the delineation is,” City Manager Sammy Rich told The Center Square. “Would those buses have needed to have stopped at a typical public bus stop and picked up other passengers? Would that have passed the test?”

The transgression will cost Rome’s taxpayers $5 million – including buying a replacement school bus fleet and reimbursing the federal government, The Center Square found.

“It’s all tax dollars,” Mayor Craig McDaniel said. “It all came out of somebody’s pocket that gets up every day and goes to work and pays tax money.”

After the audit, the city agreed to stop its tripper service at the end of 2019. That forced the school system to spend $3.5 million buying its own fleet of buses and establishing a transportation department, Rome City Schools spokesman Jim Alred said.

The mayor said the money came out of emergency reserves.

Earlier this month, the city commission voted to settle with FTA for nearly $1.5 million. In correspondence with Georgia Department of Transportation – the passthrough agency for federal transportation funds – FTA demanded to be made whole for the remaining useful life of the 28 tripper buses.

“If the debt becomes delinquent, FTA may report this claim to commercial credit bureaus and consumer reporting agencies,” a letter sent to Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry said. “FTA may also forward this claim to a collection agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, or a private contractor for collection of the debt.”

Georgia DOT already paid the sum to avoid paying interest. Now the state wants its money back from Rome.

First, the city will pay $431,720 – the proceeds from selling most of the buses at auction.

Then Rome will be on a payment plan for the remaining $1.06 million, with the feds deducting it from transit grants the city would have received over the next six to seven years, Rich said. The first $65,000 installment will come out of unspent Transit Trust Funds from fiscal year 2023.

“Nobody likes it, but we could have had a more painful way,” Rich, the city manager, said. “Let’s say we had to go tap into city general funds … That would have been a lot more painful than being able to utilize the grant funds.”

What remains unclear is how Rome got into this predicament in the first place. Rich said he doesn’t know if someone with the city or state knowingly bent the rules, if the city had received prior permission to use the money for school buses, or if the federal government changed its rules at some point.

The city tried to work out a better settlement, with the former mayor and the city manager making multiple trips to Washington. Former Mayor Bill Collins said problems with the tripper buses included lacking stop arms and outside adults potentially riding the routes with kids.

FTA did not respond to an interview request from The Center Square.

“For the city of Rome, it just is what it is,” current Mayor McDaniel said. “I don’t know that I could point a finger at one person or at one entity and say they did anybody wrong. It’s just a situation where there was an unknown there, until we finally found out what they were going to do.”

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Rome, with a population of about 39,000, is within the Congressional district of U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s unclear if she’s taken a position or tried to intervene on behalf of the city, or been asked to. Her office also did not respond to interview requests about the FTA matter, and Greene has announced she will resign from Congress early next year before her term is up, citing personal attacks from President Donald Trump.

Former Mayor Collins said the city did get help from Greene’s predecessor, former U.S. Rep. Tom Graves, and late former U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, who both took part in meetings in Washington.