Sea change in CEO’s job – post-Vernon
April 15, 2008 at 11:51 am by Scott Henry in News
One of the most interesting smaller bits of local legislation in the flurry of the General Assembly were several competing bills aimed at reducing the power of the DeKalb CEO. The irony here is that the impetus for the bills has been the sometimes authoritarian tenure of Vernon Jones, and yet he’ll be gone by the time the bills would take effect.
As you might know, DeKalb government has a rather unique structure among metro counties, in which a full-time CEO runs the day-to-day affairs of the county, sets the commission agenda, presides at commission meetings and holds veto power over commission actions.
In the waning hours of the session, Sen. Emanuel Jones, D-Decatur, succeeded in passing his bill to take away the CEO’s power to set the commission agenda and preside at meetings. It was similar to a House bill by DeKalb Rep. Kevin Levitas, a Democrat. A third bill by Rep. Mike Jacobs, a newly-minted Republican, would also have stripped the CEO of his veto power. Both House bills failed.
Jones says his effort was supported, perhaps surprisingly, by DeKalb Commissioner Burrell Ellis and DeKalb House delegation Chairman Stan Watson, both of whom are running for the CEO’s seat. Although Vernon won’t be affected by the change, Sen. Jones (no relation) says Mr. CEO had “set the mold” for future county heads to continue expanding the influence of the position, so it needed to be reined in.
Sen. Jones said he’d even checked with the two surviving former senators who had originally passed the 1982 bill creating the CEO’s job for Manuel Maloof.
“They said they realized they had erred in giving the position so much power,” Jones says. “It just took 26 years to correct the mistake.”
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
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