This is the week Georgia’s candidates for Congress, statewide offices, district attorneys and the General Assembly are required to formally submit their applications to appear on the ballot. The hip kids refer to this ritual as qualifying. It’s not exactly thrilling, but the list inevitably yields a couple “who’s running and who isn’t” surprises.

Rep. Karla Drenner (D – Avondale) is the only Decatur or Decatur-ish representative on the list so far. We’ll keep an eye on it this week and let you know if there are any surprise additions or omissions.

If you have an extraordinarily high tolerance for boredom, the Secretary of State’s office updates its online list as the papers come in.

(Post by Andisheh Nouraee, filling in for Mr. DM)

I guess we would be naive to think the county would take all these annexation attempts lying down.

As Cranky (“Vote Cranky!”) recently pointed out in a comment, the DeKalb County Commission recently voted on a resolution that expresses “support for restraints on annexations that are done not to provide new services to an under-serviced area, but simply to increase a municipal tax base and legislation to allow property owners to de-annex themselves from municipalities.”    The full three page resolution can be read here (pdf).

Assuming that the commission voted in favor of the resolution (still seeking confirmation of this), it will head to the DeKalb County Delegation to the Georgia General Assembly.

Obviously, this request is being made in reaction to all the recent annexation attempts being made by DeKalb cities.  Our mayor hasn’t been shy in saying that the main reason to consider annexation is increasing the commercial tax base.

But all this resolution seems to urge is adding a layer of red tape into the annexation process.  Instead of allowing the directly-affected constituents of a community to decide whether they want to accept the annexation of a city, the county seems to be urging that someone else should make the decision about whether an annexation attempt is valid.

But who will make this decision?  A judge?  How does a city prove that its not out to increase your tax base?  How bad do DeKalb County services have to be to be judged as “under-servicing” their constituents?

Welcome to the next chapter in the city/county battle for our property taxes!