State Rep. Stands Up Against DeKalb Tax Freeze
Decatur Metro | March 12, 2010City annexation makes some folks do some mighty strange things.
This morning’s AJC reports that State Representative Ernest Williams (D-Avondale Estates) (D-Stone Mountain) asked the House to vote down extending DeKalb’s tax freeze for another five years, because he’s unhappy that that same body created the city of Dunwoody last year.
Williams said later he wanted to make the point that he does not believe the citizens of DeKalb were treated right last year when the issue of creating the city of Dunwoody was turned from a local matter into one voted on by the full House.
“That [the call for defeat of the property tax freeze] was my way of retaliation. It’s politics,” Williams said, adding that last year DeKalb not only lost Dunwoody as an unincorporated area, but with it $18 million or more in revenue.
While I’m glad that there’s a word in the English language for such an odd form of retaliation (“politics”), I wonder how that explanation will fly with voters come the next election cycle, if for some reason the DeKalb tax freeze is allowed to expire.
Latest from Decaturish
How did this fellow get the “Avondale Estates” appellation?
He used to be “D-Stone Mountain”. Here is the link to his District:
http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2009_10/house/communications/maps/HD089.pdf
Weird….yeah that looks more like “Stone Mountain” to me, in the weird world of identifying city-sized districts in unincorporated areas.
I’ll change it my article. Not sure why the AJC used Avondale.
Ahh the sweet taste of obstructionist revenge with a tasty dollop of sticking-it-to-the-man!
This type of visionary leadership will insure the city incorporation trend at the expense of the the pathetically managed, shrinking and resentful unincorporated-county.