East Cobb Government

The two Republican members of the Cobb Board of Commissioners were asked to leave the elected body’s first meeting of 2023 Tuesday morning after they said they would abstain from voting on agenda items.

GOP members JoAnn Birrell of East Cobb and Keli Gambrill of North Cobb tried to abstain in protest of a commission redistricting map that’s the subject of a lawsuit.

The board’s three Democratic commissioners in October approved a redistricting map that keeps District 2 Democratic commissioner Jerica Richardson in her seat.

But the Republican-dominated legislature approved maps last year that would draw her into Birrell’s District 3, which now covers most of East Cobb.

A lawsuit has been filed opposing the county’s home rule challenge, claiming that only the legislature can conduct reapportionment.

Birrell and Gambrill, who were both re-elected in November, have repeatedly stated that the county-approved map is not legal.

There was a hearing in Cobb Superior Court last week seeking an injunction against the county maps, but a ruling has not been issued.

Before the first agenda item on Tuesday, Birrell asked Cobb Deputy County Attorney Debbie Blair which maps the commission was “operating under” for the meeting.

Blair responded the county map is considered to be in effect. Birrell cited an opinion from the Georgia legislature’s Office of Legislative Counsel (you can read it here) that the commission’s resolution is unconstitutional, and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office has reached the same conclusion.

“It has no bearing whatsoever,” Blair replied, saying that the attorney for plaintiff in the lawsuit—East Cobb resident Larry Savage—was voluntarily dismissing the suit for technical reasons and is expecting to have it refiled.

“That is their opinion,” Blair said of the legal opinions, “that the procedure we conducted was not proper. That is not the opinion of the county.

“Until it is overturned by the courts, it is a valid process that we did follow.”

Democratic Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid tried to prevent Birrell from pressing the issue at that point, saying it wasn’t part of the meeting agenda.

“I’m just not comfortable with the makeup of the board, not knowing, this is still pending,” Birrell said.

“This is a state issue that we don’t control.”

At the first item up for a vote—approval of a typically routine certificate for a swimming pool construction at a home in the Chattahoochee Plantation neighborhood in East Cobb—Birrell and Gambrill abstained.

Cupid initially recorded the vote with the clerk as approval of the certificate by a 3-0 vote with two abstentions, then asked for a legal clarification.

Blair said commissioners cannot abstain from voting unless they have a “valid” conflict of interest that should have been expressed in advance.

They also must leave the dais before abstaining from a vote, Blair said.

“The conflict is the votes with [maps] the county is saying are in place,” Birrell said. “Everything is going to be a conflict, and I’m abstaining.”

Cupid then called for a recess followed by an executive session, according to Birrell, who told East Cobb News after the meeting that the county attorney “advised if a commissioner is present they have to vote unless there is a conflict of interest. I feel that this was a conflict of interest for me since a ruling on the maps has not been decided.”

When the executive session was over, Cupid asked Birrell and Gambrill to cast votes on the same agenda item. They both declined, and Cupid called for another recess and asked her two colleagues to “remove themselves from the dais.”

They were told they would be escorted away by security if they did not leave their seats voluntarily.

When the meeting resumed again, Birrell and Gambrill were absent from the dais, having been dismissed by Cupid. They watched the rest of the meeting in the guest seating area of the board room.

“The chair’s ‘use of force’ by ordering the police officer to remove us from the dais when no crime has been committed would have resulted in a lawsuit against the chair and county,” Gambrill said, as neither “Commissioner Birrell nor I broke any laws.”

(You can watch a replay of the meeting below; the sequence above occurred between 4:00 and 40:00, including the recesses.)

Gambrill told East Cobb News in a message Wednesday morning that as far as procedures go, Cupid should have made a motion to rescind the vote in which Gambrill and Birrell abstained before asking them for another vote.

“Coming back from [executive session] and demanding Commissioner Birrell and I to vote when there was no active motion on the floor—is dictatorship at its finest,” Gambrill said.

“In addition, after the chair removed us from the Board, she then changed the vote to 3-0 with Birrell and Gambrill absent. This is false.”

The three remaining commissioners, all Democrats, went through the rest of Tuesday’s meeting agenda.

At the end of the meeting, Cupid remarked that she was hopeful that all five commissioners will be in attendance at the board’s next meeting later this month and that “we will be abiding by the rules of procedure.”

Should the county lose its legal challenge, Richardson may be forced to step down from office, triggering a special election for the remaining two years of her term.

Under state law, Richardson would have had to move into the new District 2 by Dec. 31 to be eligible to run in 2024. But she has vowed to defy what she said has been an “unprecedented” vote by the legislature to reapportion a sitting elected official out of a seat.

Cupid said at Tuesday’s meeting that based on legal advice from the county attorney, the maps approved by the commission’s Democratic majority “are the maps that stand until there is a successful legal challenge in a court of law.”

Birrell and Gambrill also have complained that the county attorney’s office has not sought a response from the Georgia Attorney General’s office, which thus far has not formally weighed in.

“An opinion by the Attorney General’s office is an opinion,” Cupid said. “It does not determine the outcome nor the work of this board.”

Cupid added that “I cannot allow for this board to be a circus for people to share differences of opinion that are completely outside of our rules of procedure.

“I hope that the public understands that and I hope our commissioners understand that.”

In response to questions from East Cobb News, Birrell reiterated her concerns via e-mail that she and Gambrill “have asked for the Attorney Generals’ opinion in the past and again today as this is a state issue.”

The commissioners’ next scheduled meeting is Jan. 24.

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