It’s a 20-mile drive from state Sen. Mike Crane’s home in Newnan to the farthest southern
reaches of Fulton County.
But Crane and other non-Fulton Republicans are playing a big role in a debate over
the county’s future. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution review found more than a third
of the people representing Fulton in the General Assembly live outside the county.
That’s far more than the proportion of out-of-county lawmakers representing Cobb,
DeKalb and Gwinnett.
And it’s no accident. In 2011 Republicans redrew legislative boundaries to gain control
of Fulton’s delegation. Now Georgia’s largest county, where most residents are minorities
and where Democratic President Barack Obama won 64 percent of the vote in November,
has a white Republican majority in the General Assembly.
That majority plans to make big changes to a county government that has endured botched
elections, jail overcrowding and complaints about dubious tax liens. Republicans say
the county also spends too much money and is unresponsive to their constituents.
Among other things, Republicans have introduced bills to cut deeply into the county’s
property tax revenue, to make it easier to fire employees and to redraw County Commission
districts in a way that gives Republicans a chance at winning a majority. …
None of it would have been possible without the redistricting that allowed Republicans
to gain control of Fulton’s legislative delegation.
Though state law leaves much of the governance of the county to the locally elected
Board of Commissioners, Fulton’s legislative delegation can dictate some of the details
and limit the commission’s power through bills called “local legislation.”
Until this year, Democrats held a 14-8 majority of Fulton County’s seats in the House
and a 4-3 majority in the Senate. But in 2011 the Republican-controlled Legislature
redrew House and Senate districts across the state based on 2010 census data.
Now Republicans enjoy a 13-12 edge in Fulton County House seats and a 7-4 majority
in the Senate. To accomplish that, they extended districts into Fulton that previously
had not included the county.
As a result, 13 of 36 state legislators whose districts now include a piece of Fulton
live elsewhere. Four live in Cobb County. Two each live in DeKalb, Gwinnett and Fayette
counties. Others live in Cherokee, Coweta and Forsyth. Eleven of the 13 lawmakers
who live outside Fulton are Republicans.
“It just seemed like it was a goal to have a (Republican) majority there, and they’re
obviously making use of that majority now,” said Kennesaw State University political
scientist Kerwin Swint, a redistricting expert.
