Thursday, May 1, 2008

DeKalb lawmakers may fight creation of Dunwoody

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

State lawmakers in DeKalb County are dropping very large hints that they’ll file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice to stop the creation of the city of Dunwoody.

State Rep. Stan Watson, who is now running for DeKalb County CEO, said this to ,CrossRoads News a south DeKalb weekly:

“We have eight attorneys who are actually legislators in the House and they are working on it as we speak. We should have a statement that we can send to the press in the next five to 10 days.”

Dunwoody legislation passed the General Assembly this spring and was immediately signed into law by Gov. Sonny Perdue. But before a July 15 referendum can occur, the process must pass Justice Department scrutiny.

This sounds like the gist of the complaint:

Watson said that the vote on the bill should have been taken only by the 26-member DeKalb delegation — not all 236 members of the General Assembly. The bill passed the House 106 to 60.

“The legislators understand that home rule was violated,” Watson said. “They took a local piece of legislation and made it a general bill that allowed the people from all over the state of Georgia from Valdosta to Rome to Columbus to vote on DeKalb County, and they don’t pay property takes here.”

In other words, a General Assembly controlled by white Republicans thwarted the will of African-American legislators who dominate the DeKalb delegation.

AJC April 29, 2008

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And now we know a little about Stan Watson.....

It would be interesting to know how he voted when Sandy Springs, Milton and John's Creek were up for consideration.

This should be easy for him/them to file a complaint. They should be able to change the city name from their previous DOJ complaint to Dunwoody and just file it.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

THE BIG TUNA said...

This is smoke and mirror stuff to cloud the issues. ALL of the other cities were incorporated this way and none had any DOJ problems. This is a link to the Sandy Springs vote in the State House.

http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2005_06/votes/hv0322.htm