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.