After voting Tuesday to adopt last year’s voter referendum for a considerably weaker CEO, the DeKalb Commission is already looking to scrap it.  According to an article in today’s AJC, a majority of DeKalb Commissioners are in favor of doing away with the CEO entirely and hiring a city manager to run day-to-day operations.

CEO Burrell Ellis, who favored the weakened CEO referendum last fall – even though he was running for job – doesn’t sound all that enthused on this latest development.  Ellis suggests that the commission may just be using this idea in order to gain leverage in a recent budget dispute.

I’m not sure I can come down definitively on either side of this particular issue.  I do believe that Ellis has made significant inroads to repair many of the charred bridges left by his predecessor.  On the other hand, with a city manager-style government, I might actually stand a chance of understanding the way decisions are made at the County level.

Right now I’m pretty sure the way it works is they all flip a coin, the North and South DeKalb contingents argue over whether it’s heads or tails, and then the CEO vetoes it. 

Kidding…love ya politics.  Love ya.

Our county’s new CEO was sworn in yesterday!  Cue the street-dancing.

I think as long as Ellis doesn’t make me feel like I have no right to know anything that he’s doing, I’ll be happy.

…So, can we settle this HOST dispute now?  What?  Too early?

Take a gander of this sample ballot for the November 4th elections.

Five pages long! Along with McCain/Obama and Chambliss/Martin, there are enough elected official positions up for grabs to fill an entire four pages/screens, though many are running unopposed. (Hmm…how will I ever chose who should get the Board of Ed seat in Section 2, let alone Section 8!) As David in Atlanta points out in the comments, I seem to have ignored that most of the first few pages are a collective list of all local senators and reps across the state. Still, I think the post title still applies. There’s still much to consider.

But the final page is where all the really interesting local stuff is located. That’s where you’ll find all of the strangely worded constitutional amendments, referendums and special elections. As the AJC points out on its front page this morning, the most relevant local issue is the one that could potentially rein in the power of the DeKalb CEO, who currently presides over all commission meetings and sets the agenda. But just from seeing it on the ballot, I’m sure some folks will have no clue that’s exactly what it will do. Here’s the wording…

“Shall the act be approved which provides for the presiding officer to preside over meetings of the DeKalb County Commission and for the commission to establish its own agenda for such meetings?”

If you think that DeKalb needs to be run a little more like a republic and a bit less like a pseudo-monarchy, you’ll want to vote “yes” for this one. All members of the current commission support the measure (big surprise!), including incoming CEO Burrell Ellis (real surprise!), according to the AJC article.

Perhaps next time we’ll address proposed constitutional amendment #2 (which really should be called the Beltline project resolution), regarding school districts use of tax funds for redevelopment purposes. What fun!

Report from 1st Christian Church Polling Station…

Went in around 8:15. No wait but there were three/four folks in front of me. In total I probably saw about 10-12 people that had just/or were about to vote. Not bad for a runoff…

As always, the volunteers were overly gracious and as nice as can be…especially at such an early hour. My thanks goes out to them.

Most importantly, I have my sticker.

Decaturguy and DriftGrift wade into the “fetid waters” stirred up by State Rep. Kevin Levitas’ opinion piece in last Friday’s AJC calling for the elimination of the position of DeKalb County CEO.

Both suggest that Levitas to get his interfering “heavy hand” out of the county’s cookie jar.

DriftGrift is wary of a county commission sans CEO and looks to the west for an example.

Fulton has a much more traditional form of county government. One which certainly could be the model for the legislation now proposed by Levitas and Jacobs. Power is dispersed among the various commissioners with a board appointed county manager running day to day operations.

The result of such distributed power over a huge infrastructure is instead of a single strongman, Fulton has individual fiefdoms. lorded over by their elected representative. And you want discontent? The Fulton system has worked so well the voters have for all practical purposes voted the entire county out of existence. It’s no shock the “let’s form our own city” push began with north Fulton’s Sandy Springs and then metastasized to Johns Creek, Milton and Chattahoochee Hills.

There has always been an uneasy truce between Dekalb and its various towns but compared to the neighbors to the west, the tension has been no worse than the typical family Thanksgiving dinner – lots of sniping with everyone warily glancing about, but no one leaves the table until the pecan pie is served.

While Decaturguy points towards his hometown to combat the idea “pouring hours” legislation that jump-started this current initiative

I would also point out that the City of Decatur (which has its own last call hours and would not be impacted by anything Dekalb County does) has a 4AM last call and there aren’t late night nightclubs pouring into the city. That’s probably because Decatur is not going to put up with any lawlessness. If there is something illegal going on at these clubs then it is a law enforcement problem, not a reason to curtail the freedoms of law abiding business owners, their employees, or their customers.

I do agree that this is a bit of an over-reaction by the state, but ultimately if you learn one thing in Local Politics 101 its that cities are products of the state. For Better or Worse.