Fresh Loaf

DeKalb is one of the few counties in Georgia that actually feature a couple of competitive races this year for state legislative seats.

Most state House and state Senate contests in the county — like elsewhere in Georgia — aren’t competitive at all. State lawmakers did too good a job gerrymandering their own districts so that challengers would find it nearly impossible to unseat them.

But there are challengers who stand a chance in two North DeKalb House districts that fall along a jagged boundary of aging suburbs — inside or straddling the Perimeter — where demographics are changing quickly enough to give Democrats a chance to win Republican seats.

One of the vulnerable incumbents is Rep. Jill Chambers of District 81 (Chamblee and Doraville), the only Republican incumbent in a district that voted for John Kerry in 2004.

Chambers faces additional hurdles this time: She’s been the focus of attacks by the Dunwoody Crier newspaper for her stance against Dunwoody cityhood; a DeKalb man told police earlier this month that she confronted him at his home after he filed an ethics complaint against her (the complaint accuses Chambers of violating campaign finance rules by accepting more money than allowed from a business on whose behalf she later introduced beneficial legislation); and her opponent, Chris Huttman, is an experienced Democratic activist.

We appreciate the fact that Chambers has been among the most independent Republican voices in the General Assembly. Her willingness to buck GOP orthodoxy on issues ranging from education to transportation to Dunwoody cityhood has been refreshingly practical.

But her behavior at times has been erratic and high-handed. Earlier this month, Huttman — a bright young blogger who’s articulate on the issues — was the subject of a shamefully misleading flier from her campaign. It’s the kind of nasty politicking that all voters should be wary of, regardless of their ideology.

It also makes sense for the middle-class, aging suburbs that make up the 81st District to elect a candidate from a party that will represent middle-class interests. Huttman fits the bill.

In the neighboring District 80 (which runs from Druid Hills to Brookhaven), formerly Democratic Rep. Mike Jacobs has an unfair advantage in his first re-election campaign as a Republican.

Challenger Michelle Conlon, a solar energy consultant, has been forced to run as an independent instead of as a Democrat. That happened because Republican Secretary of State Karen Handel refused to reopen campaign qualifying for Democrats after another Democratic candidate was disqualified for residency reasons. Appearing on the ballot as an independent is almost certain to harm Conlon’s chances, even though she has Democratic Party support and promises to caucus with the Democrats in the House.

Jacobs has been a diligent representative. He knows the district, stays in touch with civic groups and works hard on constituent service. But his switch to the GOP, after winning re-election under the Democratic banner, was troublingly opportunistic — particularly because it was accompanied by craven support for such harmful ideas as House Speaker Bill Glenn Richardson’s irresponsible tax plan.

Residents of this highly educated district deserve a more thoughtful voice on the big issues that confront the Legislature. We side with Conlon in her uphill battle.

For more posts from CL’s 2008 Voters’ Guide click here. Come back next week to download our Voter’s Cheat Sheet.

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Michelle Conlon wants you to know she isn’t really an independent.

It’s a long story, but I’ll try to keep it brief: Conlon, a renewable energy consultant, had planned to run against mid-Dekalb state Rep. Mike Jacobs as a Democrat. Jacobs upset many of his constituents last year when he switched parties to become a Republican. But another Democrat candidate, business owner Keith Gross, persuaded Conlon to sit out the race. Secretary of State Karen Handel later found Gross to be in violation of the residency requirement and bounced him from the ballot — but did not reopen qualifying. So, in order to get into the District 80 race, Conlon has been forced to run as an independent. But most folks naturally assumed her to be a Democrat.

Apparently, Conlon was worried that not enough people had gotten the message. This morning, she held a telephone press conference with House Minority Leader DuBose Porter, D-Dublin, to remind us that although there’s an “I” behind her name, she’s really a Democrat and would caucus with the Democrats if elected. Democratic leaders have been helping Conlon’s campaign and funneling her contributions, but it seems she wanted to underscore that link with a public statement.

Although Jacob arguably has a majority-Democratic district, he’s known to be an effective campaigner who stays in touch with his constituents, so Conlon has a tough challenge ahead of her — even as a Democrat.

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One of the other less-publicized fights amidst all the November election brouhaha has been between Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel and Michelle Conlon, an independent candidate for state House District 80. In late July, the secretary threw out a petition Conlon circulated to be considered eligible to face Rep. Mike Jacobs, R-DeKalb, the incumbent. Conlon then appealed Handel’s decision in Fulton County Superior Court.

And now, according to her press release, she’s won. You’ll see her name on the ballot come November against Jacobs.

From a campaign release:

Michelle Conlon, Candidate for House District 80, has prevailed in her lawsuit to compel the Secretary of State to place Ms. Conlon on the ballot in November.

“This is exciting news not only for me but for the voters in the district who deserve a choice on the ballot. I am looking forward to moving past this distraction,” said Conlon.

…“It is unfortunate that it took a lawsuit to get the Secretary of State to abide by her statutory responsibility to review the petition, but we are pleased with the result,” said Ms. Conlon. “I look forward to campaigning on the issues that matter to residents of House District 80.”

Conlon will be listed on the ballot as an Independent Candidate; however, she plans to officially announce her victory at an Obama Acceptance Speech event Thursday evening at Galla’s Pizza. Conlon hopes her message will appeal to Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike.

“Mike Jacobs needs to be fired. This is not the guy we elected. And he has not given us the representation that we were promised. He switched parties’ mid-term, voted for predatory lending, to cut public education funds and for guns on MARTA. When your representative cannot decide who he is or want he wants, he is ineffective in representing you,” said Conlon.

Now that she is on the ballot, Conlon is optimistic regarding her chances in November. She notes: “More people signed my petition than voted for my opponent in his July Primary.”

Click here to visit her campaign website. The full release from the Conlon campaign is pasted after the jump.

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Get ready to OD on rezoning issues, DeKalbites. There’s a host of heavy-duty proposals coming down the pike that promises to keep slow-growthers, homeowner activists and land-use variance geeks occupied for days to come.

First up is an apartment complex being proposed for the Merry Hills neighborhood just west of the Toco Hill Shopping Center by Ashkouti Development. In an e-mail to constituents, local state Rep. Mike Jacobs, (R-DeKalb) calls the plan “the most egregious encroachment into a residential neighborhood I have seen during my time in public service.” Mike can be pretty hard to read sometimes, but we’re gonna go out on a limb and guess this means he doesn’t like it.

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Among Georgia counties, DeKalb is the acknowledged Democratic stronghold. So it’s astonishing that the Democrats have failed even to get anyone on the ballot to challenge the county’s most notorious (OK, only) party-switcher.

State Rep. Mike Jacobs, who turned Republican last summer, looks to be home-free following the recent disqualification of Keith Gross on residency grounds. An administrative law judge determined last month that Gross, an openly gay businessman, hadn’t lived in Georgia for two years, as required by law. Last week, Secretary of State Karen Handel agreed; Gross did not appeal her decision.

But wait, that’s not all. (more…)

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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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Rep. Mike Jacobs, R-Atlanta, conducted a poll of 318 households in his mid-DeKalb district to see what local homeowners thought about the prospect of high-density, mixed-use development — a la what the Sembler Co. is proposing — around the intersection of Briarcliff and N. Druid Hills roads.

Turns out surrounding residents are fairly split on the notion: About 53 percent said they would not like to see that kind of redevelopment there, while 47 percent said they would — providing that it was accompanied by infrastructure improvements, such as traffic upgrades.

But the county commission is already moving in a direction some consider to be full steam ahead toward redevelopment. At tomorrow’s board meeting, commissioners are expected to vote on whether to create a tax-allocation district around the intersection. Ideally, a TAD would produce the funds necessary to pay for a transportation overhaul of the area. Some critics, including Jacobs, believe a community improvement district – in which infrastructure funds come out of landowners’ pockets, not from future tax revenues — is a better approach.

The meeting begins at 9 a.m. at the Manuel Maloof Auditorium in Decatur. Vernon Jones will be large and in charge.

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By an interesting coincidence, Fulton and DeKalb counties could both see their forms of government tweaked somewhat in the upcoming General Assembly – but in radically different directions.

In Fulton’s case, the push is to expand the authority of the commission chairman, who has no more real power than a district commissioner. And there’s talk of shrinking the governing board from seven commissioners, including the chairman, to a leaner five members to reflect that most of the county is now contained within cities.

In DeKalb, it’s just the reverse. The elected CEO has so much power that the board of commissioners can sometimes seem irrelevant. And so there are competing bills from both parties to shift some of the CEO’s power back to the commission. There’s also an initiative to expand the commission from seven members to nine to provide more attentive representation to the largely unincorporated county.

But the two efforts do have one thing in common: They could live or die on the personalities and political baggage of the affected office-holders.

(more…)

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This past spring, Sen. David Adelman, D-Atlanta, unveiled a bill that some considered a breath of sanity in the city-makin’ frenzy that had gripped the General Assembly. Dubbed the Georgia Townships Act, it would give unincorporated communities some of the benefits of self-governance without having to take on all the responsibilities — and costs — of a full-fledged municipality.

Put more simply, it would create a middle-ground option between being the long-suffering patsies of an uncaring county government and having to form a city from scratch — with all of the headaches that entails. Under Adelman’s bill, a town would control its own planning, zoning and land use — the most common reasons for disenchantment with one’s county commission.
Now, two Republican lawmakers are pushing a competing township bill that goes a few steps farther. Under a proposal by Reps. Ed Lindsey and Mike Jacobs, both of Atlanta, towns would also have dominion over code enforcement and building permits — so far, so good — as well as liquor licenses.
Huh?

Jacobs says the booze provision was added after DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones vetoed a local ordinance to roll back bars hours in response to complaints by nearby residents in some communities. Reportedly, House Majority Leader Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons, is already interested in exploring the township option for his island home.

However, the most interesting difference is Lindsey’s contribution, which would give communities within existing cities additional say-so over their zoning destinies.

Lindsey hasn’t ironed out the details yet, but says, “I don’t want this to be perceived as an attack against cities.”

Too late for that. The Georgia Municipal Association is already gunning for Adelman’s bill with both barrels, claiming that it would undermine cities’ efforts to annex new territory. The GMA may be right; in many cases, forming a town could be an attractive alternative to creating a new city or joining an existing one. But since when is giving people a broader range of
options a bad thing?

Our hunch is, if it hated the Adelman bill, which has already passed the Senate, the GMA will really loath the Lindsey provision.

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