State Sen. Preston Smith, R-Rome, has been appointed to the House-Senate conference committee that is charged with finalizing provisions of a proposed transportation sales tax.

A 1-cent regional tax proposed by Gov. Sonny Perdue didn’t pass by the General Assembly’s Friday deadline, but a bill calling for a statewide sales tax passed the Senate last year and is still alive for the session.

Smith said the committee will try to revise the provisions to reflect a regional funding plan.

The amended bill and a resolution setting up a statewide vote will then have to pass both chambers in the nine days left in the session.

“We’ll need a November constitutional amendment vote on the ability to impose a regional sales tax, then the regions will go back later to vote on the tax,” Smith said. “There are a lot of moving pieces in that bill. It’s a complicated piece of legislation.”

House Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Roberts, R-Ocilla, said it was quicker to use the older Senate bill as basis for negotiations than to start anew with the House bill.

“We could have passed it, but it would have gone through a Senate committee and then we’d still be where we are with a conference committee,” Roberts said.

Neither he nor Senate President Pro Tempore Tommie Williams is expecting any criticism for bypassing the normal committee process in the Senate. After all, the House and Senate have each passed two versions of transportation-funding bills in the past two sessions after committee hearings and floor debate.

Senators said privately that previous negotiations broke down because of a clash between former House Speaker Glenn Richardson and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who was the front-runner for the Republican gubernatorial nomination at the time. But Richardson has resigned, and Cagle has quit the governor’s race to run for re-election, so the friction may be less this year.

When asked if the short time left in the session could result in agreement escaping legislators yet again, Williams said not with the current approach.

“With a conference committee, we can technically put a deal together and put in on the floor any time,” he said. “I think most of the Senate is OK with bypassing the normal committee process and moving straight to a conference committee.”

In the past, the House and Senate have stressed different ideas on whether Georgians should vote on the sales tax statewide or by clusters of regional counties. Perdue announced in January he favors a regional vote by assigned districts and has threatened to veto legislation that allows individual counties to opt out of the tax.

He told reporters Tuesday afternoon he remains confident the conference committee will produce a bill he can support.

“I think the legislature understands where I am on that,” he said, adding that he still favors his own concept best. “I think we’ve put out a great proposal that’s widely accepted. I’m hoping that we can come to a resolution.”

Staff writer Diane Wagner contributed to this report