New Cobb city proposals gain momentum despite qualms of some leaders
GEORGIA RECORDER: GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
ROSS WILLIAMS | JANUARY 28, 2022
A proposed city of East Cobb sponsored by east Cobb Republican state Rep. Matt Dollar passed a House vote 98-63 and is set to head to the Senate. Hours later, bills to create the city of Vinings in south Cobb County and Lost Mountain in west Cobb found favor in a House committee, potentially teeing them up for a vote in the full chamber.
For a long time, Cobb County was reliably Republican, but growth and urbanization brought a political shift as well, sweeping Democrats into major countywide positions, including Commission Chair Lisa Cupid, who was elected to her role in 2020.
“These initiatives are grassroots driven, and so they can originate in many different forms,” she said. “And there have been questions from citizens as to how information is being shared, because based off of how those who are starting this process decide to meet and share that information, it can cause a lot of variation in what information the public gets. Also, the persons that may be starting this initiative may not necessarily be public leaders. And so just even understanding the larger public interest in knowing how they are making decisions that can impact the larger community, I think has just been a learning process for all of them.”
“There have been some changes that have been shared in the legislative committees that weren’t necessarily shared with the public in their feasibility studies that they shared, so there has been some concern, and reasonably so, from citizens to get that information out,” she added.
Smyrna Democratic state Rep. Teri Anulewicz echoed Cupid’s concerns from the House floor, pointing to what she said were major changes to the East Cobb plan since it passed committee.
Rather than electing six city council members who would choose a mayor from among themselves as previously planned, the current bill calls for voters to elect six council members and a mayor.
“Such a profound change to the city structure happened so quickly and with so little input and evaluation from the public, this bill has been very difficult for the public to follow along with at home, with numerous committee substitutes, all of these changes,” she said.
Anulewicz questioned whether voters would have full knowledge of what they were to vote on in the spring and whether the Cobb County elections office could prepare the new ballots in time.
“Now the election date is set for the May primary not the November general election as it was originally set,” she said. “The proponents have in the bill set the election for a time when, in all likelihood and reality, very few people will turn out to vote to change the lives of more than 60,000 people. People need more than a couple of months of education to learn about how this city would work, whether it would work for them and how it would impact their daily lives.”
Every Democratic member of the Cobb County delegation voted against the East Cobb measure except for Austell state Rep. Erica Thomas, and every Cobb Republican voted yes, save Marietta state Rep. Don Parsons.
Parsons characterized the city as artificial and planned by people who want to run for city council or mayor, and he said he had his own questions about the May referendum.