East Cobb Politics & Elections Archives

Cobb commission, school board redistricting maps approved

February 25, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Cobb redistricting — *Democrats Charisse Davis of the Cobb school board and Jerica Richardson of the Cobb commission have had the East Cobb portions of their districts removed.*

Two first-term Democrats who represent part of East Cobb on the Cobb Board of Commissioners and the Cobb Board of Education will have different electoral boundaries soon.

The Georgia Senate finalized redistricting bills for both bodies on Wednesday, clearing the way for Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature into law.

The bills were sponsored by Cobb Republicans over the objections of the county’s Democratic-led legislative delegation, and easily passed in the legislature, which has strong GOP majorities.

Cobb GOP BOC redistricting map — *For a larger view of the new Cobb commissioners map, **click here**.*

Jerica Richardson, who was elected to commission District 2 in 2020, was drawn out of her district in a map that for the next decade will place most of East Cobb in District 3 (in gold on the map at right).

District 2 has included the Cumberland-Smyrna-Vinings area and part of East Cobb. Richardson moved into a new home off Post Oak Tritt Road last year, but will have to move again by the end of the year if she seeks a second term in 2024.

The new District 2 (in pink) will include Cumberland-Smyrna-Vinings, some of Marietta and other areas along the I-75 corridor.

The bill’s main sponsor, Republican John Carson of Northeast Cobb, has said that his map will likely keep the commission’s current 3-2 Democratic majority.

But Richardson and other Cobb Democrats have been vocal at Georgia Capitol press conferences in opposing the GOP maps.

“This bill essentially overwrites the vote you made 2 years ago and creates a new map that doesn’t take the community’s input into consideration,” Richardson said on her Facebook page Thursday.

“This is a dangerous precedent, and I plan to continue making my voice heard in order to support this community and its needs.”

District 3 commissioner JoAnn Birrell, a Republican, is nearing the end of her third term this year.

Charisse Davis, who has represented the Walton and Wheeler clusters on the Cobb school board since 2019, also was drawn into a new post that no longer includes East Cobb.

She lives in the Cumberland-Smyrna-Vinings area, which forms the heart of the new Post 6. Davis is up for re-election but has not announced whether she’s seeking re-election.

Cobb school board redistricting town hall — *For a larger view of the new Cobb school board post map, **click here**.*

East Cobb News has left a message with Davis seeking comment.

She noted on her Facebook page recently that the Cobb GOP maps affecting her, Richardson and current 6th District U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath are “ensuring that the east Cobb area will no longer have representation from any of the Black women whose districts currently include east Cobb.”

While East Cobb has been solid terrain for Republicans, Democrats have been making gains in recent elections as the once-conservative county undergoes significant demographic and political change.

Only on the Cobb school board do Republicans have a local majority.

For the last three years, the school board has held a 4-3 GOP edge (after Republicans previously enjoyed a 6-1 advantage), and has been roiled controversies that generally have fallen along partisan lines.

The shifting lines for the school board also reduce East Cobb representation to two members. They are current chairman David Chastain, a Republican who has said he will be seeking another term in 2022 for Post 4, and David Banks, the GOP vice chairman whose Post 5 will now cover most of the Walton and Wheeler areas.

Davis and fellow first-term Democrat Jaha Howard, also of the Smyrna area, have been in the middle of disputes over the senior tax exemption, equity issues, student discipline matters and the Cobb County School District’s COVID-19 response.

The new maps put Davis and Howard, currently of Post 2, together. But he has announced he is running for Georgia School Superintendent this year.

(PLEASE NOTE: The process of redistricting elected school board posts has nothing to do with the boundaries of school attendance zones, which are drawn by school district administrative staff and are done mainly to balance out school capacity.)

McBath, completing her second term, has switched to the 7th district, which includes most of Democratic-leaning Gwinnett County after the legislature redrew the 6th to create a GOP-friendly seat that includes East Cobb, North Fulton, part of Forsyth County and Dawson County.

Part of East Cobb also is included in newly redrawn 11th District, which is represented by Republican Barry Lowdermilk.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

NE Cobb resident announces campaign for Cobb commissioner

February 22, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Judy Sarden, an attorney and homeschooling advocate who lives in Northeast Cobb, has announced her campaign for District 3 on the Cobb Board of Commissioners. Judy Sarden, Cobb commission candidate

She is running in the May 24 Republican primary, and has lived in Cobb County for 15 years, initially residing in South Cobb.

District 3 is currently held by Republican JoAnn Birrell, whose third term expires at the end of 2022.

Sarden announced her campaign on Friday, and in a release said that she “understands first-hand why people move to and stay in Cobb County as well as the challenges that Cobb families face—specifically, zoning issues, county finance accountability, keeping taxes low, providing the best education for our children and maintaining an active and vibrant community.”

She said that her objective “is to serve the people of District 3 as a Commissioner who listens to her constituents and who ensures that their voices are heard at the county level. She understands that regardless of who a constituent voted for, our County commissioner represents all residents of her district and she hopes to help our community begin to healafter the divisiveness of the recent past.”

Sarden’s campaign website can be found here. She filed her declaration of intent to run on Feb. 11. Qualifying for the primaries is March 7-11.

On her campaign site, Sarden also mentioned East Cobb Cityhood, which is also on the primary ballot for eligible voters in the proposed city.

Sarden said while she supports voters having the right to decide on whether to become a city, “there appear to be many unanswered questions that the original feasibility study did not answer and that need to be addressed and debated before a vote should occur.”

She said the referendum is taking place along a “rushed timeline” and linked to a special work session held by commissioners last week (previous ECN story here).

While the current District 3 boundaries do not include the proposed city of East Cobb, a bill moving through the Georgia legislature would redraw the seat to cover the proposed city, and most of the East Cobb area in general.

Sarden and her husband homeschool two children and she also has an adult son and two grandchildren. The family attends First Baptist Church in Woodstock.

She earned a business degree from Auburn University and law degree from Samford University, and has been a corporate attorney for more than 20 years.

Sarden also has written a book about homeschooling and has spoken around the country on that topic.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

4 candidates qualify in East Cobb Ga. House special election

February 18, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Georgia House District 45 map — *For a larger view of the current District 45 map, **click here**.*

Three Republicans and one Democrat have qualified for a special election in April for a Georgia House seat in East Cobb.

According to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, the candidates competing in a “jungle” election in District 45 are the following:

Mitchell Kaye, a Republican;
Pamela Alayon, a Republican;
Dustin McCormick, a Democrat;
Darryl Wilson, a Republican.

Qualifying ended Friday afternoon. The special election was called for April 5 by Gov. Brian Kemp after former State Rep. Matt Dollar resigned on Feb. 1.

His successor will serve through the end of the year, when Dollar’s term expires.

In the May 24 primary, candidates for the newly drawn District 45 will be running in a separate election. Qualifying for primaries in all races takes place from March 7-11.

McCormick, a project management official at McKesson, had previously announced plans to run in the May primary in the new District 45.

Kaye is a former state representative who served District 45 for a decade, from 1993-2003, before Dollar began his tenure in the legislature.

Alayon is a hospitality recruiting franchisee who ran for chair of the Cobb Republican Party in 2021.

Wilson is a commercial airline pilot who was the chairman of the 6th Congressional District Republican Party and also ran for Cobb GOP chair.

In the special election, the four candidates will be competing together. If the top vote-getter does not receive a majority, a runoff between the top two finishers would take place on May 3

Dollar, who took a job with the state’s technical college system, said last fall he was not running for re-election after 20 years in office.

He and State Rep. Sharon Cooper, an East Cobb Republican who represents District 43, were drawn together during reapportionment.

Dollar was the main sponsor of the East Cobb Cityhood bill that was passed into law this week.

Voters in the proposed City of East Cobb will decide on whether to create a new city on May 24.

McCormick has stated his opposition to the proposed city of East Cobb.

The Cobb Elections office said there are 12 precincts in the county with voters who are eligible to vote in the special election:

Chestnut Ridge; Dickerson; Dodgen; Hightower; Murdock; Mt. Bethel 1; Mt. Bethel 3; Pope; Roswell 1; Roswell 2; Sewell Mill 1; Timber Ridge

Voters can check their eligibility for the special election by visiting the Secretary of State’s office My Voter Page.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

East Cobb Cityhood bill signed into law; May 24 referendum set

February 17, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has signed legislation calling for a May 24 referendum on East Cobb Cityhood.

Final passage of HB 841 took place on Tuesday in the Georgia House, and the bill was sent to the governor’s office to be signed into law.

Eligible voters inside the proposed East Cobb city limits will decide on incorporation on the same day as the Georgia general primary.

The ballot language included in the bill will ask voters the following question:

“Shall the Act incorporating the City of East Cobb in Cobb County according to the charter contained in the Act be approved?”

If the referendum is approved by a majority of the voters, elections for a mayor and six city council members will take place on the Nov. 8 general election, with the beginning of city operations and a two-year transition to start in January 2023.

The East Cobb legislation is the first of four cityhood bills in Cobb County to be considered in the current legislative session.

The proposed City of East Cobb would have roughly 60,000 people in a 25-square-mile area centered along Johnson Ferry Road, from Shallowford Road south to the Chattahoochee River and from the Fulton County line west to a line roughly along Murdock Road and Old Canton Road. Click here for a larger version of the map.

Revised East Cobb city map

On Thursday, the Georgia Senate passed similar legislation for Lost Mountain in west Cobb, and is set to vote on a bill for a referendum for Vinings.

A Mableton cityhood bill is still in the House.

All four Cobb cityhood bills call for May referendums, instead of November.

That sparked protests by Cobb government officials, who said they haven’t had time to assess the financial and service impacts.

On Tuesday, they addressed Cobb commissioners as part of a county “cityhood awareness campaign.” The major claim is that more than $45 million would be lost in county revenues if all four cities are created.

More than 200,000 people—nearly a quarter of Cobb’s population—live inside the proposed new cities.

Cobb has had its current existing cities—Marietta, Smyrna, Acworth, Kennesaw, Austell and Powder Springs—for more than a century, after Mableton briefly became a city and then went unincorporated.

Lost Mountain, Mableton and Vinings are proposing “city light” services that are focused on planning and zoning.

East Cobb is proposing planning and zoning, code enforcement and public safety services, and possibly parks and recreation.

At Tuesday’s commission work session, the heads of Cobb’s public safety agencies questioned the East Cobb financial feasibility study conclusions and expressed concerns about staffing, equipment, response time and training for the proposed East Cobb police, fire and 911 services.

The Committee for East Cobb Cityhood said it is planning an in-person town hall meeting for the general public soon, but has not set a date.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

Former East Cobb GOP legislator running in special election

February 16, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Mitchell Kaye, who held a Georgia House seat in East Cobb for a decade, announced Wednesday he is running in the special election for District 45. Mitchell Kaye, Georgia House special election

Kaye served from 1993-2003, and was the first Jewish Republican elected to the Georgia legislature.

In a press release announcing his campaign, Kaye said he’s running because “it is important that this seat remain Republican.”

The special election was called for April 5 after longtime GOP Rep. Matt Dollar resigned to take a job with the state technical college system.

His successor will serve the rest of Dollar’s term, through the end of the year.

A primary for the new District 45 will be held in May. State Rep. Sharon Cooper, an East Cobb Republican who has held the nearby District 43 since 1997, has been drawn into the new 45.

Qualifying began Wednesday and continues until 1 p.m. Friday for the special election, which will be held in a “jungle” format, meaning candidates of all parties will be running together.

If the leading candidate does not get a majority of the vote, a runoff will take place on May 3.

The only other special election candidate who has announced is Democrat Dustin McCormick.

Kaye has lived in East Cobb for more than 30 years and is a financial and valuation analyst. He and his wife Amy have three children and two grandchildren and are members of the Chabad at Cobb synagogue.

He also has written a column for the Atlanta Jewish Times publication.

During his time in the legislature, Kaye was a deputy minority whip when Republicans were in the minority.

He received a legislator of the year award from the Eagle Forum for supporting parental rights in education. Kaye also worked to repeal a state tax on used cars.

The Republican-dominated Georgia General Assembly reapportioned Congressional and legislative seats in November in an attempt to solidify their majorities.

Democrats have filed lawsuits claiming the redrawn lines are diminishing black voting power, especially in former conservative areas like Cobb that are electing more Democrats.

In his campaign release, Kaye said that “unless a judge throws out the reapportionment maps, the winner of this election will not serve a single day when the legislature is in session, and it is critically important that constituent services go uninterrupted.”

If the lines must be redrawn in a special session, Kaye said, “I have been through these reapportionment battles before. Now is not the time for on the job training as experience is more important than ever.”

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

Qualifying starts Wednesday for Ga. House special election

February 15, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Qualifying for an April 5 special election to fill the Georgia House seat 45 in East Cobb will take place Wednesday through Friday of this week.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a release that qualifying will take place at the Georgia State Capitol (2 MLK Jr. Drive, Suite 802, Floyd West Tower, Atlanta) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, and from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday.

The qualifying fee is $400.

The special election was called last week by Gov. Brian Kemp after the resignation of longtime Republican State Rep. Matt Dollar, who has taken a job with the state’s technical college system.

The successor will fill out the remainder of Dollar’s term, which expires Dec. 31. Candidates and voters must live within the current boundaries of District 45 (map here), which also includes some of North Fulton.

That seat will be redrawn for the May primary and November general election. Dollar said last fall he was not seeking re-election after he and GOP State Rep. Sharon Cooper of the nearby 43rd district were drawn together.

The last day to vote in the special election is March 7, and advance voting will begin on March 14. A runoff, if needed, would take place May 3.

Thus far Democrat Dustin McCormick is the only candidate who has announced his candidacy for the special election. He also said he will be running in the new District 45.

The Cobb Elections office said there are 12 precincts in the county with voters who are eligible to vote in the special election:

Chestnut Ridge
Dickerson
Dodgen
Hightower
Murdock
Mt. Bethel 1
Mt. Bethel 3
Pope
Roswell 1
Roswell 2
Sewell Mill 1
Timber Ridge

Voters can check their eligibility for the special election by visiting the Secretary of State’s office My Voter Page.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

East Cobb Cityhood bill gets final passage in Ga. legislature

February 14, 2022February 14, 2022 by Wendy Parker

East Cobb City Council district map — *For a larger view of the proposed East Cobb city council districts, **click here**.*

The Georgia House on Monday adopted Senate substitute legislation to call for a referendum for a proposed City of East Cobb.

HB 841 (you can read it here) was approved by a 96-62 vote in the lower chamber without debate, and will be sent to Gov. Brian Kemp to be signed into law.

It would establish a May 24 referendum for voters in the proposed city to decide whether or not to incorporate.

A second vote in the full House was needed after the Senate passed a substitute bill on Thursday that included clarifying language about proposed city council districts.

The six city council members will be chosen citywide, but they will have to live in the district they seek to represent (see map).

The House version of that bill did not indicate that.

The bill is the first of four Cityhood bills in Cobb County that has passed the legislature.

Last week, Cobb County government published a Cityhood Resource Page that angered members of the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood.

The county is spending more than $40,000 for lobbyists to oppose the cityhood bills.

Cobb officials estimate the impact to the county budget would be more than $45 million a year if all four proposed cities—East Cobb, Vinings, Lost Mountain and Mableton—would come into being.

The financial estimates contend that nearly half of those revenues would come from a City of East Cobb of around 60,000 residents along the Johnson Ferry Road corridor.

The county also has protested moving up the referendums in each of the four Cobb cities from November to May, saying it would put an additional burden on Cobb Elections for the general primary.

But the East Cobb Cityhood group questions the county’s financials and objected to taxpayer money being spent to fight the bills.

The Vinings and Lost Mountain bills have passed the House and are headed for the Senate; the Mableton bill is being heard by a House committee.

The Cobb Board of Commissioners is holding a special work session Tuesday at 6 p.m. to cover cityhood issues, including potential impact on county finances and services.

It’s a virtual-only event and can be viewed on the county’s YouTube channel.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

Ga. House passes GOP Cobb school board, commission maps

February 20, 2022February 14, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Mostly along party lines, the Georgia House on Monday approved Republican-sponsored bills redistricting seats on the Cobb Board of Education and the Cobb Board of Commissioners.

They now will be considered by the Senate.

The bills drew opposition from members of the Democratic majority in the Cobb legislative delegation, who accused their GOP colleagues of skirting local courtesies during reapportionment.

But Republicans dominate in the Georgia legislature, and the House voted 94-59 to approve the school board map approved in December by the GOP-led Cobb school board.

The House also voted 95-64 to approve a commission map drawn by GOP State Rep. John Carson of Northeast Cobb that he said would likely still maintain the current 3-2 Democratic majority.

But Democratic lawmakers objected to redrawing current Democratic District 2 Commissioner Jerica Richardson and District 3 Republican Commissioner JoAnn Birrell into the same East Cobb-based district.

Birrell and Keli Gambrill, the other GOP commissioner from District 1 in North Cobb, are both up for re-election this year.

If the commission map is approved, Richardson would have to move inside the boundaries of the new District 2 if she runs for a second term in 2024.

Although redistricting bills must be passed by the entire legislature, local delegations typically move maps forward for full House and Senate votes.

But in the last election cycle, Democrats became the majority on the Cobb commission, which previously had a 4-1 Republican majority.

Republicans hold a 4-3 edge on an increasingly fractious Cobb school board, with a mostly partisan split on a number of issues.

The GOP map would move Post 6—the Walton and Wheeler clusters currently represented by Democrat Charisse Davis—into the Smyrna-Vinings area.

The Walton, Wheeler and Pope clusters would be included in a new Post 5, where four-term Republican David Banks is the incumbent.

The Sprayberry, Lassiter and Kell clusters would be reformed into Post 4, whose current member is Republican David Chastain.

Chastain has indicated he will be seeking a fourth term this year. Davis, in her first term, has not said whether she’s running again in 2022.

(PLEASE NOTE: The process of redistricting elected school board posts has nothing to do with the boundaries of school attendance zones, which are drawn by school district administrative staff.)

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

Special election for Ga. House seat in East Cobb is April 5

February 11, 2022February 11, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Gov. Brian Kemp has set April 5 as the date for a special election to fill a Georgia House seat in East Cobb.

That’s the day after the final day of the Georgia General Assembly’s 2022 session.

The vacancy in House District 45 was created when longtime State Rep. Matt Dollar, a Republican first elected in 2002, resigned his seat on Feb. 1.

He has been the chief sponsor of the East Cobb Cityhood legislation that is nearing passage in the legislature.

The special election will be held in jungle format—meaning candidates of all parties will be running together.

The successor will fill out the rest of Dollar’s term, which is through the end of the year.

During reapportionment in November, District 45 was redrawn to include both Dollar and Republican State Rep. Sharon Cooper, who has represented adjoining District 43 since 1997.

Last fall, Dollar announced he would not be seeking re-election. He stepped down shortly after the East Cobb Cityhood bill was transmitted to the Senate, saying he was taking an economic development job with the state technical college system.

The only candidate who has announced an interest in the special election thus far is Democrat Dustin McCormick.

He also said he will be running in the May 24 primary for the new District 45 seat.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

East Cobb Cityhood bill passes Ga. Senate; returns to House

February 11, 2022February 10, 2022 by Wendy Parker

The Georgia Senate on Thursday adopted a bill that would establish a cityhood referendum for East Cobb, but the legislation needs further action by the House.

By a 31-18 vote, the Senate approved HB 841, which would call for a May 24 referendum.

The bill that passed the Senate was a substitute from a Senate committee that included clarifying language on residency requirements for city council candidates.

That’s why the bill has to go back to the House, since a different version was passed there.

A motion by Sen. John Albers, the Senate sponsor of the East Cobb bill, to transfer the bill to the full House passed 30-16, but it didn’t get the required two-thirds of a majority vote.

Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan referred the bill back to the lower chamber in “normal order,” meaning it has to go through the committee process.

Albers, a Republican from North Fulton whose district will include the proposed East Cobb city boundaries next year, said that voters in East Cobb deserve the right to self-determination through a referendum.

He noted that in the last 17 years, 11 cityhood bills in Georgia have been voted in, and 10 of them have passed.

“We do not create cities,” he said from the Senate well. “We only create opportunities for citizens in those areas to create them.”

Two Democratic senators spoke against the bill, mainly for the timing of the referendum.

The original East Cobb bill was to have been in November, but was moved up to May in a change made during the House committee process by former State Rep. Matt Dollar.

He was the bill’s chief sponsor before resigning after it was sent to the Senate.

Sen. Michelle Au of Johns Creek, a member of the Senate State and Local Government Operations Committee, said that while “I don’t have an objection to cityhood movements,” the May referendum is an “arbitrary deadline.

“There’s no reason that I can see that we need to rush.”

Three other Cobb cityhood bills—Lost Mountain, Vinings and Mableton—also have May referendums.

Au said more time is needed for the financial impact of those new cities, if they come to pass, on Cobb County government.

State Sen. Michael “Doc” Rhett, a Democrat from South Cobb, made the same point, and also said the May referendums would be hard for Cobb Elections to include on an already full primary ballot.

“I understand the need for autonomy,” Rhett said. “Let’s slow down.”

Voting for the East Cobb bill was Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, a Republican from East Cobb. She did not speak from the Senate floor on behalf of the bill.

Her district currently includes the proposed East Cobb area but is not under new boundaries redrawn in reapportionment.

She was opposed to the East Cobb cityhood bill when it first came up in three years ago but said recently she was supportive of letting voters decide on whether to have a city.

The East Cobb Cityhood group is having a virtual information session Thursday at 6 p.m.; you can register by clicking here.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

Former East Cobb State House candidate running for Ga. Senate

February 8, 2022 by Wendy Parker

A Democrat who twice came close to toppling one of the Georgia House’s top Republican leaders in the last two elections will be running for the State Senate in 2022. Luisa Wakeman

Luisa Wakeman has announced her candidacy for District 6 in the Georgia Senate, which has been been redrawn to include some of the Mt. Bethel, Sope Creek, Sewell Mill and East Side precincts as well as the Terrell Mill, Powers Ferry and Chattahoochee precincts in East Cobb (see map here).

District 6, which also include portions of Smyrna-Vinings and Sandy Springs, is represented by Democrat Jen Jordan, who is running for lieutenant governor.

Wakeman is an East Cobb resident who lost by fewer than 500 votes in 2020 to State Rep. Sharon Cooper, an East Cobb Republican who is the House Health and Human Services chairwoman.

A former flight attendant and nurse, Wakeman registered her campaign committee last week. Her campaign website can be found by clicking here.

In a release, she said that “this is an important election and we must step up in order to continue to move the state forward. We have a majority party pushing extreme legislation that defies the values of most Georgians. While our kids continue active shooter drills in school, Republican legislators are pushing a law that allows anyone to buy weapons without a license.

“As hospitals fill to capacity and frontline healthcare workers have been pushed to exhaustion, legislators used their power to prevent lawsuits from covid-19 harm. After an election where parents, grandparents, frontline workers, waited hours in line to vote, legislators made it even more difficult for Georgians to cast a ballot, especially voters in Black and immigrant communities. We deserve representation that will listen to the people of this district.”

Other Democratic candidates for the District 6 race include Jason Esteves, the former chairman of the Atlanta Board of Education.

Qualifying begins in March for the May 24 primary.

In 2020, the District 43 State House race between Wakeman and Cooper was one of the more expensive legislative races in Georgia, with both candidates raising more than $500,000 combined.

After reapportionment, both Cooper and Wakeman were redrawn into District 45, which has a vacancy after the resignation last week of State Rep. Matt Dollar.

Dollar, the chief sponsor of the East Cobb Cityhood bill, said last fall he would not be seeking re-election.

Redistricting sliced up East Cobb into four State Senate seats. Most of it has been in District 32, which is represented by Republican State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick since 2017.

That district has been redrawn to include some of Northeast Cobb and parts of Cherokee County. Kirkpatrick is seeking re-election but has a GOP primary opponent in State Rep. Charlice Byrd of Woodstock.

District 56 will include much of the Johnson Ferry Road corridor and has been represented by State Sen. John Albers, a Republican from North Fulton who is sponsoring the East Cobb Cityhood bill in the upper chamber.

District 33 includes the East Marietta area and is represented by Democratic Sen. Michael “Doc” Rhett.”

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

Editor’s Note: Why the rush for Cobb Cityhood referendums?

February 8, 2022February 5, 2022 by Wendy Parker

*With the resignation of State Rep. Matt Dollar this week, his East Cobb cityhood bill is being carried by lawmakers from Acworth and North Fulton.*

By this time next week, a bill calling for a referendum to create a City of East Cobb may have passed the Georgia legislature and would await with the signature of Gov. Brian Kemp.

After only 10 days of legislative action, HB 841 easily has flown through the House and a seven-member Senate committee, and likely will be acted on by the full Senate this week.

Although the East Cobb bill was submitted nearly a year ago, that the legislation has taken on dramatic and confusing new dimensions since November, and especially in the last three weeks.

After filing an initial bill with a “city light” set of proposed services—planning and zoning, code enforcement and parks and recreation—then-State Rep. Matt Dollar brought a substitute bill with him to the State Capitol when the 2022 session began.

Instead, it included police and fire services—a controversial part of the initial East Cobb cityhood bill that was abandoned in 2019—along with planning and zoning and code enforcement.

Those were services that were evaluated in a financial feasibility study conducted by Georgia State University researchers and released in November.

That was the first surprise. Cityhood leaders said at the time that there was “unilateral” support for police and fire services from citizens they surveyed over several months, but they never bothered to tell the public about it until the study was done.

After a House committee approved Dollar’s substitute in mid-January, the East Cobb Republican lawmaker came back to the same panel to amend his bill a week later.

That’s because his bill would move up the referendum date to allow voters in the proposed East Cobb boundaries to decide on cityhood from November to May.

So would the three other cityhood bills in Cobb County—Vinings, Lost Mountain and Mableton—that are currently before the legislature.

After the initial committee meeting, Dollar also was questioned extensively about a governance structure that would have six city council members, who would choose a mayor from among themselves every two years.

So Dollar amended his substitute bill yet again, to still have six council members—with two each living in one of three districts—and a mayor elected directly, citywide.

The House Governmental Affairs Committee also heard from Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid, who said the county was still assessing the financial impact of cityhood and that she wanted voters to have more complete information.

While the county has had more than a year to prepare for this moment, the significant change in services in East Cobb, plus additional changes since the bill has been considered in the legislature, should prompt a pause.

What’s the rush to having a referendum in May? Not just in East Cobb, but in the other three proposed cities?

They comprise more than 200,000 people, or roughly a quarter of Cobb’s population, and voters are being asked to consider significant changes to their local governance. These shouldn’t be rammed through the legislature and then onto the May 24 primary ballot.

Dollar—who abruptly resigned his seat in the legislature this week after the House transferred his bill to the Senate—said it was to avoid having a special election in early 2023 for city council elections, should an East Cobb referendum pass in November.

But Cobb taxpayers will soon be footing the bill for a special election to fill the rest of Dollar’s unexpired term, with his successor likely serving only in a caretaking role after the legislative session is over.

At a Senate committee hearing on Thursday, State Rep. Ed Setzler, an Acworth Republican who’s sponsoring the East Cobb and Lost Mountain bills, was asked if he would delay the East Cobb referendum to November.

“The consensus among the community was to get moving,” Setzler said, not bothering to explain who those community members may be.

Another committee member who wanted to see the proposed city council districts that haven’t been released in map form asked to table a motion to favorably report the bill, but that failed.

Most of those doing the questioning on Cobb cityhood bills in the legislature have been Democrats. But Republicans easily control the Georgia legislature, and since Democrats took control of the Cobb Board of Commissioners last year, GOP members of the Cobb delegation have been busy with cityhood bills (the Mableton bill has two Democratic co-sponsors, one of whom voted for the East Cobb bill).

Concerns over controlling development and growth are the focal points of those bills. When the East Cobb bill was filed last year, I thought it was a vast improvement over the 2019 effort, which never made sense with its focus on police and fire services.

The GSU feasibility study for the current bill is scant on details about how an East Cobb city of about 60,000 people could afford and fund full-service public safety services. There would be one police precinct and two fire stations, but the financials are basically line items about annual revenues and expenditures.

The main revenue source would be the 2.86 mills in the current Cobb Fire Fund.

There’s not much in the study about the true cost for salaries and benefits (including pensions) for 71 police officers and an unspecified number of firefighters. Nothing is in the study about expenses needed to train and equip them.

Those aren’t the only areas where the feasibility study conclusions just don’t add up. That’s why the East Cobb bill should be amended to push back the referendum to November.

Voters deserve the time to educate themselves about the issues and to be able to question the lawmakers and cityhood supporters who are putting this before them.

That hasn’t happened since late last summer, before public safety services were added to the financial study, and before the fast-moving event taking place now at the Gold Dome.

There should be public, in-person or hybrid town halls—not the virtual-only meetings that have taken place over the last year—for those purposes. They could be done this spring and fall, as the previous cityhood group did in 2019.

But those pushing the East Cobb bill in the legislature don’t seem to be interested in that.

(None of whom, by the way, actually live in East Cobb with Dollar departed. State Rep. Sharon Cooper is a co-sponsor of the bill and voted for it in the House, but didn’t speak during floor debate. State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick is more supportive than two years ago but she is running for re-election in a district that doesn’t have the proposed city of East Cobb and is not a sponsor of the bill.)

East Cobb cityhood supporters have been making the repeated point that that citizens deserve the right to have a referendum.

I agree that they do, but the feasibility study they commissioned is flawed and the legislation that is built around it has changed a lot in such a short amount of time.

It needs to be improved before those voters go to the polls.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

House subcommittee to hear Cobb GOP redistricting bills

February 5, 2022 by Wendy Parker

A Georgia House subcommittee on Monday will consider two bills submitted by Cobb Republican legislators to redistrict seats on the Cobb Board of Education and the Cobb Board of Commissioners.

A special subcommittee on redistricting and elections will meet at 3 p.m. Monday to hear HB 1028 and HB 1154.

The agenda and a live viewing link for the meeting can be found by clicking here.

The Republican bills would redraw commission and school board lines very differently than State Rep. Erick Allen, a Smyrna Democrat and the Cobb legislative delegation chairman, has proposed.

In the case of the former, District 2 commissioner Jerica Richardson and District 3 commissioner JoAnn Birrell would be placed in the same district covering most of East Cobb.

Democrats have a 3-2 edge on the current commission, after Republicans have enjoyed majorities since the 1980s. Birrell, who is a Republican, and fellow GOP commissioner Keli Gambrill voted against recommending Allen’s proposed boundaries.

Both Birrell and Gambrill are up for re-election this year. Richardson, a Democrat whose first term expires in 2024, would have to move into the new District 2 if the GOP bill is approved. She recently bought a home off Post Oak Tritt Road, which would be in the new District 3 under the GOP bill.

The school board map is identical to boundaries recommended by the four members of the Cobb school board’s Republican majority.

*Cobb school board member Charisse Davis*

That includes shifting Post 6, which includes the Walton and Wheeler clusters, into the Smyrna-Vinings-Cumberland area.

Like the Republican legislators’ commission map, school board representation in East Cobb would be reduced to one member, Republican David Banks of Post 5, who was re-elected in 2020.

Allen has proposed a map that keeps the seven school board posts very similar to what they are now.

That includes retaining the East Cobb areas of Post 6, which is represented by first-term Democrat Charisse Davis. She lives in the Smyrna-Vinings area and is up for re-election this year, but has not announced her plans.

The Cobb legislative delegation has a one-member Democratic majority. But as is happening in Gwinnett County, Cobb Republicans are attempting an end-around the typical delegation reapportionment process.

The Cobb GOP bills are likely to pass in a Republican-dominated Georgia legislature.

At a press conference earlier this week, Allen decried the Cobb GOP bills. As he was speaking, State Rep. Ed Setzler, a Republican from Acworth and a driving force behind the GOP legislation, crashed the event, leading to some heated discussion.

(Setzler is also pushing cityhood bills, including Lost Mountain in his district and is a co-sponsor of the East Cobb Cityhood bill that passed a Senate committee Thursday.)

On Friday, Allen, who is running for lieutenant governor, urged his supporters and other Democrats to attend Monday’s subcommittee hearing on the “inappropriate” bills.

The Cobb County Democratic Committee also decried the “gerrymandered” maps, saying “you need to stand in protest against these shameful acts” and accusing Cobb Republicans of “overthrowing an election by other means.”

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

Democrat launches campaign for Ga. House special election

February 4, 2022February 4, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Dustin McCormick

East Cobb resident Dustin McCormick has announced he’s running in a still-to-be-called special election for a Georgia State House seat vacated this week by longtime legislator Matt Dollar.

McCormick, who’s in a financial management position at McKesson Corp., said Friday he’s seeking the short-term post in District 45 and will be running for the same seat in the May primary.

Here is McCormick’s campaign website.

McCormick had already set up a campaign committee for the 2022 elections before Dollar’s abrupt resignation on Tuesday.

Dollar, a Republican, left his office of nearly 20 years shortly after the East Cobb Cityhood bill he sponsors was submitted to the Senate for consideration.

Gov. Brian Kemp has not yet called for a special election, which must be held within the next 30 to 60 days. The successor would fill out the remainder of Dollar’s term, although he or she may not take office until after the current legislative session.

For now, District 45, which includes some of the Pope and Walton High School clusters, has no representative (here are the current boundaries).

McCormick, who lives in the Bishop’s Green neighborhood, opposes East Cobb Cityhood. The bill, which passed a Senate committee Thursday, proposes public safety, planning and zoning and code enforcement services.

McCormick said it’s adding another layer of government and taxation, and said East Cobb residents already “enjoy fantastic Police, Fire, and EMT coverage with some of the best response times in the area.”

In a release issued Friday, he said that “I’m thrilled to run to represent the community that has given me and my family so much. I believe in a responsive government that preserves our quality of life and focuses on the issues that matter to your family.”

According to his website McCormick’s other priorities would be to update the current model of state funding for public schools and to implement anti-bullying programs in schools.

He also supports hate crimes legislation and supports expanding Medicaid.

McCormick and his partner Misty, and have two children, Audrey and Finley.

He is an active member of the Bishop’s Green HOA, the East Cobb Civic Association, Rotary Club of East Cobb, Cobb County Democrats, and Cobb County Chamber of Commerce.

He earned a finance degree from Georgia Southern University and an Executive MBA from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business.

District 45 will have new boundaries for the primary and general election this year (see map).

Dollar announced his retirement in the fall, after he and State Rep. Sharon Cooper, an East Cobb Republican who represents District 43, were drawn into the same legislative seat.

The only other candidate who’s set up a campaign committee for District 45 for the primary and general election is Carminthia Moore, who is active with the Cobb GOP.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

East Cobb Cityhood bill gets approval of Ga. Senate committee

February 4, 2022February 3, 2022 by Wendy Parker

*State Rep. Ed Setzler also is a co-sponsor of the Lost Mountain Cityhood bill.*

The East Cobb Cityhood bill was approved by a Georgia Senate committee on Thursday, clearing the way for possible final passage next week.

By a vote of 4-3, the Senate Local Government Operations Committee favorably reported the bill, despite concerns from some panel members and a member of a citizens group against East Cobb cityhood.

One of those concerns—a district residency requirement for city council candidates—was addressed when State Rep. Ed Setzler, a West Cobb Republican and a bill co-sponsor—added clarifying language.

The other issue—pushing back a referendum to November instead of May, as was adopted in a substitute bill in the House—Setzler was not willing to entertain.

You can watch a replay of the meeting by clicking here; you can read through the bill by clicking here.

The bill now goes to the Senate Rules Committee, which could schedule the bill for a floor debate and full passage next week (the legislature doesn’t meet on Friday).

The East Cobb Cityhood legislation is the first of four such bills in Cobb to reach the Senate during the current session.

Bills calling for referendums in Lost Mountain and Vinings were favorably reported out of a House committee on Wednesday. A Mableton cityhood bill also is pending.

Also on Wednesday, Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid said the county will be pushing an “awareness campaign” about cityhood as it relates not only to county government finances, but also explaining its current delivery of services.

Setzler and State Sen. John Albers, a North Fulton Republican who is sponsoring the East Cobb bill in the upper chamber, appeared before the Senate committee Thursday.

So did several members of the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood.

Mindy Seger of the East Cobb Alliance, which opposes cityhood, pointed out that the bill passed by the House does not include language about city council residency requirements.

Under the bill, all six city council members would be elected at-large. However, there are three council districts, with each of them having two members who must reside in those districts.

The bill passed by the House requires anyone running for the city council to have been a resident of the city for at least a year (line 201 of the bill linked to above).

It doesn’t mention the district requirement, so Setzler asked for an amendment—noted in bold type—saying that “no person shall be eligible to serve as councilmember unless that person shall have been a resident of the city and the district from which he/she is elected for 12 months prior to the date of the election of members of the city council.”

Seger also said the May referendum date should be pushed back, a suggestion that some committee members also made.

Setzler said it would be ideal for a referendum in May, and if passed, with mayor and city council elections in November as preparations begin to start up a city in early 2023.

After the amendment passed, State Sen. Michelle Au, a Democrat from Johns Creek, asked if that’s “a real deadline.”

If it’s on the November ballot, Au asked, couldn’t a startup date be decided in the future.

Setzler said that a “consensus” of community feedback during virtual town halls conducted over the last year was “to get moving” early in the next year.

Another Democratic committee member, Sen. Emanuel Jones of Decatur, moved to table the bill because no demographic or district boundaries were provided, among other information he said was incomplete.

That motion failed before the committee voted to favorably report the bill.

This story will be updated.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

Cupid speaks out on Cobb cityhood bills, local redistricting

February 2, 2022February 2, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Cobb chairwoman cityhood redistricting — *Lisa Cupid speaking to the House Governmental Affairs Committee in January.*

Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid spoke out Wednesday against fast-moving cityhood efforts in the Georgia legislature and bills by Republican lawmakers that would override local redistricting efforts by the county’s legislative delegation.

Cobb spokesman Ross Cavitt sent a statement late Wednesday afternoon from Cupid, who said county officials have hired a consultant to evaluate the financial impact of legislation that could create four new cities, including one in East Cobb.

Those bills would also call for referendums in Vinings, Mableton and Lost Mountain in West Cobb. According to initial filings of those bills, those votes would have taken place in November.

But like the East Cobb bill that just passed the House, the other bills have been revised to move up the referendums in May instead.

When she spoke at a House committee meeting last month, Cupid told lawmakers the county needed time to assess the financial impact of new cities that might be created.

She also said then she wasn’t opposed to new cities but “I’m opposed to persons having to vote and not having clear and accurate information beforehand.”

In her Wednesday statement, Cupid said that “the county understood that some of these initiatives could appear on the ballot in November.

“The impact analyses cannot be completed by the May primary, so I and staff will be much more active in assessing our impact internally and in educating citizens, both in city limits and outside, about the financial impact in Cobb.”

She said while she’s “not here to thwart efforts towards determining the future of one’s community,” she wants to “ensure some sense of transparency and to better educate Cobb Citizens, more broadly, about how cityhood can impact all here.”

At a committee hearing Wednesday to consider the Lost Mountain and Vinings bills, Cobb Deputy County Manager Jimmy Gisi said the county government will be creating an “awareness campaign” detailing current county services, especially those that the proposed cities would be providing.

Of the four, only East Cobb would provide police and fire services, after the initial bill called for planning and zoning, code enforcement and parks and recreation.

Public safety services were included in a financial feasibility study issued in November, but did not detail specific costs for personnel salaries, staff training and equipment.

At the East Cobb bill’s House committee hearing, Cobb Public Safety Director Randy Crider said that given that the proposed East Cobb fire department would have only two stations serving a city with 25 square miles, “how much are we going to be relied on to provide support?”

The East Cobb bill was given its first reading in the Senate on Wednesday and was referred to the State and Local Governmental Operations Committee.

The committee is scheduled to meet at 12 p.m. Thursday to consider that bill. You can watch it live by clicking here.

The Vinings and Lost Mountain bills were reported favorably out of committee and will likely be scheduled for a House floor vote next week. The Mableton bill was filed Jan. 10 and has had a second reading but has not been scheduled for committee action.

On Tuesday, State Rep. John Carson, a Northeast Cobb Republican, filed a bill to redistrict the four district seats on the Cobb Board of Commissioners in dramatically different fashion than Smyrna Democrat Erick Allen, the Cobb delegation chairwoman who would keep those lines similar to what they are now.

Carson’s bill would put the two commissioners representing East Cobb—Republican JoAnn Birrell and Democrat Jerica Richardson—in the same district.

The commission’s three Democrats, including Cupid, supported Allen’s map, but Birrell and Republican commissioner Keli Gambrill were opposed.

In her statement late Wednedsay, Cupid said that while Carson’s map would likely keep a 3-2 Democratic majority, “his iteration of the map occurred without communication to the full Board of Commissioners. It is unclear to me if he consulted with the local state delegation regarding his proposed map.”

Cupid further said that “no pothole is seeking an R or D for resolution. His map certainly undermines the respectfulness of elected leadership of this county when it fully draws someone out of an area that they have been elected to represent. It also furthers political polarization when districts must be drawn that are either Republican or Democrat and not a combination of both which can result in balanced thought within the leaders that represent them.”

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

Cobb Republicans file bill to redistrict county commission seats

February 2, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Like they did regarding reapportionment for the Cobb Board of Education, Republican legislators in Cobb County have filed their own map for the redistricting of Board of Commissioner seats that are separate from the county’s legislative delegation leaders.

In HB 1154, filed Tuesday by several GOP House members—including three from East Cobb—both county commissioners representing East Cobb would be drawn into the same district.

*The current boundaries of Cobb commission District 3. For a larger view **click here**.*

(You can read through the bill by clicking here.)

The lead sponsor of the bill is John Carson of Northeast Cobb, and his lines would place most of East Cobb inside District 3, currently held by three-term Republican JoAnn Birrell.

She’s up for re-election in 2022, along with fellow Republican Keli Gambrill of North Cobb.

They both voted against a recommended map drawn by State Rep. Erick Allen, a Smyrna Democrat and the Cobb delegation chairman, that was supported by the commission’s three-Democrat majority.

Birrell said she did not support that map because it has taken out some of her East Cobb precincts.

Like the school board map, the GOP proposal would reduce representation in East Cobb.

Currently, District 2 includes East Cobb north of Powers Ferry Road and east of East Piedmont Road, reaching up through the Johnson Ferry-Shallowford area and including the area around Mabry Park.

That seat has been held since 2021 by Democrat Jerica Richardson, who succeeded three-term Republican Bob Ott, and whose term expires in 2024.

She had been living in the Cumberland-Smyrna area, but last summer moved into a new home off Post Oak Tritt Road.

Under Carson’s bill, that area would be included in the new District 3 (in yellow on the map at the top), which would stretch down to the Powers Ferry Road corridor. District 2 (in pink in the same map) would fall along the I-75 corridor from Kennesaw and through Marietta and retain most of the Cumberland-Vinings-Smyrna areas.

*The current East Cobb portion of District 2. For a larger view **click here**.*

Districts 2 and 3 were redrawn in 2014 to balance population.

Birrell lost some of her Northeast Cobb base in exchange for more areas in and around the city of Marietta. In 2018, she was re-elected with only 51 percent of the vote.

Until 2020, she had been part of a 4-1 Republican majority on the commission. But Richardson defeated GOP candidate Fitz Johnson to succeed the retiring Ott and former commissioner Lisa Cupid ousted GOP chairman Mike Boyce to create a 3-2 Democratic majority.

The Cobb Republican bills aren’t the only ones that would usurp usual county delegation deference in local redistricting.

Typically the full legislature honors the votes of county delegations to redraw local lines. But both the Cobb and Gwinnett delegations have slight Democratic majorities.

GOP lawmakers in Gwinnett have filed similar bills as that once heavily Republican county has swung toward Democrats.

The Cobb Republican bills would go through a similar process, first being heard in a House committee.

HB 1028, the Cobb GOP school board redistricting bill, was revised on Tuesday and has not yet been scheduled for committee consideration.

The Cobb commissioners redistricting bill will have a first reading in the House before being assigned to a committee.

Allen has called a press conference for Thursday morning at the Georgia Capitol to address Cobb redistricting issues.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

East Cobb Cityhood bill sponsor resigns from Ga. legislature

February 1, 2022February 1, 2022 by Wendy Parker

State Rep. Matt Dollar, a Republican who is the chief sponsor of the East Cobb Cityhood bill that just passed the House, is resigning his seat in the Georgia legislature, effective today.

Dollar, who has represented District 45 since 2003, said in a release that he is leaving to become the deputy commissioner of economic development for the Technical College System of Georgia.

“Having been born and raised in Marietta, it has been the greatest honor of my life to serve the citizens of House District 45 in the Georgia House of Representatives,” Dollar said in a statement. “I want to thank the people of East Cobb for putting their trust in me, as well as Speaker David Ralston for the confidence he has shown in me during my time as a member of the Georgia House. I look forward to my new role at TCSG and to continue helping Georgia companies grow and succeed.”

Tuesday was the ninth of the 40-day Georgia legislative session, which is scheduled to run into early April.

He initially announced his resignation during a floor speech after the East Cobb Cityhood bill was sent to the Senate for consideration.

There will be a special election for a successor to serve the rest of Dollar’s term; previously he had announced he wouldn’t be seeking re-election in November.

Gov. Brian Kemp has 10 days to call for the special election, which will take place within the next 30 to 60 days.

Dollar and State Rep. Sharon Cooper, an East Cobb Republican who represents District 43, were drawn into the same legislative seat during reapportionment in November.

Cooper and Dollar co-sponsored the East Cobb Cityhood bill that passed the House on Thursday.

However, another Cobb lawmaker, Democratic Rep. David Wilkerson, asked for a notice to reconsider, which meant it could have been voted again by the House.

But on the House floor Tuesday, Wilkerson’s motion to reconsider the bill was rejected by a vote of 97-68.

After that, Dollar moved to transmit the East Cobb Cityhood bill to the Georgia Senate, and that was approved by a vote of 100-63.

The bill, if passed by the legislature, would call for a May referendum by voters within the boundaries of the proposed City of East Cobb.

If that referendum should pass, voters in the city would then choose a mayor and six city council members in November, with the City of East Cobb beginning operations in early 2023.

“People are really seeing the value of not increasing the size of government, but shifting important services to a more local level. I want to thank my colleagues for their bi-partisan support of this effort,” Dollar said.

Shortly after Dollar announced his resignation, the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood sent out a message congratulating and thanking him for his cityhood efforts.

“We would like to thank Rep. Matt Dollar for sponsoring HB841, which in large part, has been made possible by his commitment to listening closely to what residents want out of their community’s future plans,” the cityhood group’s message said. “In partnership with the support of East Cobbers, Cityhood will incorporate our great community into one cohesive whole by preserving the character of our community not just now but down the line as well. We appreciate Rep. Dollar’s perseverance and commitment to this goal and wish him the very best in his next endeavor.”

The statement was signed individually by the group’s 13 committee members.

Dollar, a realtor and graduate of Pope High School, was the chairman of the House Creative Arts and Entertainment Committee. In 2020 he sponsored a bill to update the state’s film tax credit.

He also served on House committees on Appropriations, Economic Development, Transportation, Insurance, Motor Vehicles, Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications and Interstate Cooperation during his legislative tenure.

Cobb Republican legislators file school board redistricting bill

January 27, 2022 by Wendy Parker

Cobb school reapportionment map — *The Cobb school board’s Republican majority is recommending a map that would leave East Cobb with two seats. For a larger view **click here**.*

Republican members of the Cobb legislative delegation have filed a bill that would redistrict Cobb Board of Education posts along similar lines recommended recently by the school board’s GOP majority.

State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart of West Cobb filed HB 1028 on Wednesday (you can read it here) as the Cobb legislative delegation—which has a one-member Democratic majority—was meeting over reapportionment.

Co-sponsors of the bill include East Cobb Republicans John Carson, Matt Dollar and Don Parsons.

The delegation is carving out Cobb commission and school board lines for the next decade following the 2020 Census.

The local reapportionment process is usually completed within a county’s delegation before being submitted as a bill that must pass the full legislature, typically in consent fashion on what’s called a local calendar.

Instead, Ehrhart’s legislation will start in the House, after getting a first reading and committee assignment next week.

For the last three years, the Cobb school board has held a 4-3 Republican majority (after the GOP previously enjoyed a 6-1 advantage), and has been roiled in a number of controversies that generally have fallen along partisan lines.

State Rep. Erick Allen, a Smyrna Democrat and the Cobb delegation chairman, proposed a draft map of Cobb school board posts earlier this month that would make few changes to the current lines.

The four Republicans on the Cobb school board approved a map designed to maintain their majority. The map would take out most of the East Cobb portion of Post 6 that currently includes the Walton and Wheeler high school clusters.

That seat is currently held by first-term Democrat Charisse Davis, who under the GOP map would be drawn in the same post as Jaha Howard, another first-term Democrat who represents Post 2 in the Smyrna area.

The school board’s recommendation is advisory, but Ehrhart’s bill follows similar lines.

Post 6 would be centered in the Smyrna-Vinings area, keeping several precincts in the Powers Ferry and Terrell Mill corridors.

The Walton-Wheeler zones would mostly be shifted to Post 5, which covers the Lassiter and Pope attendance zones.

That seat is held by Republican vice chairman David Banks.

The new lines, however they might be drawn, will take effect for 2022 elections that include three school board seats.

They are Post 2 (Howard has declared his intent to run for state school superintendent); Post 6 (Davis has not announced her plans) and Post 4 in Northeast Cobb (incumbent David Chastain has said he will be seeking another term).

The Cobb delegation also will be redrawing the four district lines for the Cobb Board of Commissioners.

On Tuesday, the commission’s three Democrats voted in favor of a map drawn by Allen that makes minimal changes to the current lines.

But the two Republicans, JoAnn Birrell of Northeast Cobb and Keli Gambrill of North Cobb, voted against that map.

They are both up for re-election this year. Birrell said she does not support the proposed map because it has taken out some of her East Cobb precincts.

Like the school board’s map, the commissioners’ action is “more of an endorsement vote,” deputy county manager Jimmy Gisi said during the Tuesday meeting.

Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!

East Cobb Cityhood bill passes House; Cobb delegation split

January 28, 2022January 27, 2022 by Wendy Parker

The Georgia House on Thursday voted to approve a bill that would allow for a referendum for a proposed city of East Cobb.

After an hour of debate, the vote was 98-63, and the bill now goes to the Georgia Senate.

East Cobb Republican State Rep. Matt Dollar, the bill’s chief sponsor, voted in favor of the bill, along with other East Cobb Republicans John Carson and Sharon Cooper.

The latter is one of three co-sponsors of the East Cobb Cityhood bill, but was the only one of the trio who did not speak during the floor debate.

(You can watch a replay of the House floor session by clicking here and on the House Chamber Day 8 tab; the East Cobb debate begins around the 1:49 mark).

Voting against the bill was another East Cobb Republican, State Rep. Don Parsons, who said he wasn’t consulted about the legislation, nor has he ever heard anything from a citizens group supporting cityhood since the issue first arose four years ago.

He also objected because doesn’t think the proposed city area—around 60,000 people centered along the Johnson Ferry Road corridor—represents a community of interest.

“There is no city of east Cobb waiting to be incorporated,” he said. “There’s nothing that draws it together as a city.”

Also opposing the bill were Cobb Democrats who wanted all four current Cobb cityhood bills—including Vinings, Mableton and Lost Mountain—to be considered together.

Cobb delegation chairman Erick Allen, a Smyrna Democrat, was among those asking for a delay in an East Cobb vote for that and other reasons.

Among the charges opponents have made against the East Cobb bill would be that its proposed services—police and fire, planning and zoning and code enforcement—would add another layer of government.

But State Rep. Ed Setzler of West Cobb, another co-sponsor, said the bill isn’t about adding more government, but “representative government.”

While the current four Cobb district commissioners represent around 200,000 people, the six city council members in East Cobb would represent around 8,000 people.

“Why do the people of Smyrna deserve that level of self-governance, and the people of my community do not even deserve the right to decide if they want it?” Dollar said in his concluding remarks before the vote.

Opponents also questioned last-minute changes to Dollar’s bill this week, including moving up the East Cobb cityhood referendum from November to May.

“People need more than a couple of months of education to learn how the city would work,” said Rep. Teri Anulewicz, a Democrat and former member of the Smyrna City Council.

A co-sponsor of the Mableton cityhood bill, she said she’s not opposed to cities, but said the East Cobb bill—a substitute of legislation first introduced last year by Dollar and Cooper—is being rushed through and is “not ready for a vote. Certainly not in May.”

Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones, a Republican from North Fulton, noted than in 15 years of new cities being formed, mostly in metro Atlanta, residents of those municipalities are generally satisfied.

They include Milton and Johns Creek in her district, as well as Peachtree Corners, Tucker and South Fulton.

“It has been a resounding success,” she said, imploring her colleagues to let the citizens of the proposed East Cobb city to have a say in how they may want local governance.

“Keep an open mind, and let the people vote,” Jones said.

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