Two weeks after being removed from the meeting dais after trying to abstain, the two Republican members of the Cobb Board of Commissioners cast votes on Tuesday.
But they did so under protest, introducing formal statements that they wanted read into the record before every vote, reiterating their objection to reapportionment maps passed by the board’s Democratic majority the Republicans say are unconstitutional and illegal.
Republicans Keli Gambrill and JoAnn Birrell also challenged the accuracy of the minutes of the Jan. 10 meeting—most of which they watched from the back of the room—saying that a meeting video did not properly convey the details of an executive session that had been called, and that they say falsely recorded the two Republicans as casting a vote to go into executive session when they did not.
“The clerk has us voting when we did not vote,” Gambrill said, adding that in her first term in office, she couldn’t recall not voting to approve meeting minutes.
Chairwoman Lisa Cupid also asked Gambrill and Birrell to vote again on the first vote of the meeting, for a swimming pool construction permit, for which they initially tried to abstain. A nearly 29-minute recess ensued.
Board policies do not permit abstentions unless there is a valid financial conflict of interest. But a motion for another vote on the swimming pool item was not made after the meeting resumed. When Birrell and Gambrill declined to vote, Cupid asked them to leave the dais and later asked for security to remove them.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, Gambrill asked for a forensic audit of the video to be conducted by an outside party, and for commissioners’ votes to be electronically recorded from now on.
In response, Cupid said that commissioners are responsible for the keeping of minutes and that the county clerk [Pam Mabry] is being unfairly burdened.
“It’s an unfortunate day when we bring it up in a public manner,” Cupid said, prompting some groans from the spectators, and later added that an attempt to “dress down our county clerk was disrespectful.”
Cupid said that there was “not complete sync with the communication on the dais with the recording. But the truth is still the truth. What the eyes saw cannot be unseen and the truth that occurred cannot be undone.”
Cupid said commissioners voted to go into executive session, and “if you did not believe that they should have not participated. I hope this never happens again.”
But Birrell, whose District 3 boundaries are in dispute, she also couldn’t vote for the minutes for the first time during her tenure, which just began a fourth term.
She said there were several discrepancies in the proposed minutes, and Cupid’s directive for them to leave the dais wasn’t recorded.
Birrell repeated Gambrill’s complaint that a vote that was recorded as 3-2 that she said was accurately a 3-0 vote.
“I’m not demeaning Pam,” Birrell said, referring to Mabry. “A lot of this was procedures that were taken that I don’t agree with.”
Her District 2 East Cobb colleague, Democrat Jerica Richardson, said she supported the minutes because “the statements in it are ones I recall.”
She also told Mabry that “your integrity is not in question.”
Tuesday’s votes to approve the Jan. 10 meeting minutes passed 3-2, with the Democrats voting in favor and the Republicans opposed.
Citizens spoke on both sides of the redistricting issue, which is expected to be resumed in Cobb Superior Court when East Cobb resident Larry Savage refiles a lawsuit that had been withdrawn, challenging the county maps.
Mindy Seger of East Cobb, who leads Richardson’s political action committee to stop the legislative maps, said the county’s home rule challenge is necessary because the legislature’s actions to ignore the Cobb delegation-drawn map sets “a dangerous precedent.”
Local maps, Seger said, “are local matters to be handled locally.”
But Marietta resident Leroy Emkin said speakers arguing on behalf of the county map “are missing the point.
“The point is the law. [Commission] district boundaries are voted on by the state legislature and signed into law by the governor. . . . At the present time it is clear that no county has the authority [to draw maps]. The law is the law.”
The last speaker of the night, Donald Barth of the Cloverdale Heights neighborhood in the city of Marietta, summed up the confusion of citizens who aren’t sure who their commissioner is.
He’s been redistricted before, from District 4 to District 2 and now to District 3—he thinks.
“Does anybody know where in the hell I belong?” Barth said. “Because Marietta don’t want me.”
At the end of the meeting, during commissioners’ remarks, Birrell read from a second prepared statement, saying that Cobb’s home rule challenge has “increased tensions” on the board.
She said she and her constituents in District 3 have been harmed, the latter by not knowing who their duly elected official is, even though she was re-elected in November under the state-approved maps that have been certified by the Cobb Board of Elections.
“If the amended [county] map is the law, what does that do to the voters of all the county? Please continue to pray for all of us.”
You can watch the full meeting below.
Related:
- Activist groups organize over Cobb electoral map dispute
- Ga. Attorney General: Cobb electoral maps are ‘not legally binding’
- Cobb Republican commissioners leave meeting over absentions
- East Cobb resident files lawsuit over Cobb commission maps
- Cobb passes home rule resolution over redistricting in party-line vote
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