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ATHENS NEWS AND VIEWS
Update on Guess Who?: Doug McKillip tells
the Dope he's forwarded a proposed map of
Athens-Clarke County's commission districts
drawn up by local attorney Ken Dious to the
state reapportionment office to be used "as a
starting point" for McKillip's own redistricting
proposal for ACC. The composition of Dious'
map—10 geographical districts; no superdis
tricts—is an awful lot like what McKillip him
self proposed at an Aug. 14 town hall meeting
on redistricting, at which Dious spoke in favor
of eliminating superdistricts, which he said
decrease the chances of African Americans
being elected to the commission. Where that
leaves whatever map McKillip had purportedly
been working on with his consigliere... er,
"consultant," Bo Mabry, which had the primary
goal of increasing Republicans' chances of
being elected, is anyone's guess—unless
they're so similar no one could tell them apart.
Speaking of Mabry, the Facebook post by
McKillip's right-hand man referring to "drastic
actions" that might be avoided by the resigna
tion of Commissioner Mike Hamby were appar
ently quoted out of context in this space last
week. At least, that's what Mabry seemed to
be saying in three almost identically worded
online comments at the Flagpole website,
Blake Aued's Athens Banner-
Herald blog and Johnathan McGinty's post on
the Peach Pundit blog (the latter two of which
linked to the story here). Cunningly point
ing out that he "never said anything about
redistricting in the post," Mabry posited that
the Dope was engaged in "wishful think
ing" to imagine Hamby's resignation could do
anything to prevent McKillip and Mabry from
imposing their "fair" districts on Athens—or
something like that.
Reached by phone and asked
if he cared to clarify what he
had actually meant by "dras
tic actions," Mabry elegantly
demurred. "Not really," he
said, and hung up.
Nor did McKillip care to spec
ulate on what Mabry could have
meant by the impenetrably cryp
tic reference, which was posted
on the day the two were sched
uled to meet for an ACC map
drawing session in Atlanta, and
which concerned a particular
commissioner with whom both
have had very public disagree
ments. "You can interpret and
conjecture it any way you wish,"
the legislator told the Dope last
week. "It's politics." Indeed it
is, and few are better versed in
it than McKillip and Mabry.
As for those of us who continue to misun
derstand the innocent words of the political
consultant placed in charge of redesigning
our local government by a politician with
a well-earned adversarial relationship with
the elected officials of that government and
the power to maneuver a few of them out of
office, there's no need to sit around scratching
our heads. In the absence of a clarification
from Mabry himself, or a rebuke from McKillip,
why not ask his colleagues on the local
Republican delegation—Sens. Bill Cowsert
and Frank Ginn and Rep. Chuck Williams—if
they'd care to hazard a guess? After all,
McKillip—at least technically, and despite all
appearances—doesn't belong to a party of
one.
Dave Marr news@flagpole.com
IlfenjQIIi33[E53b32>’S Kr&zy Korner
Congress is on a well-deserved holiday right now, so
Congressman Broun’s kraziness is largely confined to the home
stead. So, I thought it would be a good opportunity to take stock of
some of Broun's predictions and see how they’ve turned out:
Prediction: The "Marxist" Obama's “steamroller of socialism” was
coming.
Result: The workers' paradise has yet to materialize. In fact, middle- and
working-class conditions are arguably worse than they were in 2008, while
Wall Street bonuses and corporate profits soar.
Members and supporters of the Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance,
protesting the Board of Regents' ban on undocumented students at
tending state universities, assembled for a “graduation" at the UGA
Arch last week. For more information, find the group on Facebook.
Prediction: Obama’s “Gestapo-like security force" would enforce the president's will.
Result: Obama's secret police, were he to have them, would be more likely to show up
at your house, help with your crime and then call it “compromise.”
Prediction: The brutal nutritional arm of Obama’s regime, Atlanta's Centers for Disease
Control, would “force you to eat more fruits and vegetables” and conduct surveillance
to that end.
Result; Again, there’s no visible sign of the monitoring. But isn’t that how Obama’s
Nazi-like government would operate—in secret? So, just in case, every time I pick up
a produce item in the supermarket. I hold it up toward the ceiling's cameras, so I’m on
record. “Are you happy now?!" I yell. I Matthew Pulver]
Redistricting Panel’s
Rees Up in the Air
At the Athens-Clarke County reapportion
ment committee's last meeting before a series
of public input sessions (the second and third
of which take place at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Aug.
30 at Clarke Central High School and 5 p.m.
Wednesday, Aug. 31 at Burney-Harris-Lyons
Middle School), county commissioners, school
board members and activists selected two
potential ACC Commission district maps to
be presented to citizens at the forums. The
committee, appointed by Mayor Nancy Denson
to oversee the process of redrawing the local
electoral map to reflect population changes
according to the 2010 Census, will meet in
early September to review public comments
and make any final revisions it deems neces
sary before submitting its recommended plans
to the mayor and commission Sept. 9. The
committee will then present its recommenda
tions at the mayor and commission's public
work session Sept. 13. The commission will
approve a final map at its regular meeting Oct.
4; that map will be given to the local legisla
tive delegation with the request that it be
ratified by the General Assembly in early 2012.
But the local redistricting process has
been steeped in uncertainty from the very
beginning. Three school board members were
appointed to the committee—one-third of its
nine members, as many as are ACC commis
sioners—despite the fact that the ACC Unified
Government has no jurisdiction over the Clarke
County School District, nor vice versa. Denson
has said that she appointed the school board
members in hopes that the committee would
consider reconciling the school board's dis
tricts with those of the ACC Commission, but
that would have required a major electoral
reorganization of one body or the other, if not
both—CCSD has nine geographical districts
while ACC has eight—and has not been dis
cussed by the committee.
And though ACC Commissioner Harry
Sims, the chairman of the committee,
has said the group will vote to approve a
single map to recommend to the commis
sion, other committee members—as well as
commissioners—have been surprised to learn
that. Since Republican Party representative
Regina Quick (who, along with Democratic
Party representative Shaye Gambrell and
"citizen-at-large" Pilar Pages, rounds out the
committee) brought forth a map that would
significantly alter the existing districts as a
counterproposal to a map drawn by profes
sional consultant Linda Meggers containing far
more modest changes, two widely disparate
approaches to redistricting have been consid
ered, which it is doubtful citizen input will
resolve. While the committee's recommenda
tion would not be binding, the prospect for
commissioners of being asked to approve or
reject the choice of a citizen panel many of
them were not aware was being assembled
until it had already been selected may not be
an appealing one. Denson says she gave the
committee no instructions with regard to how
many maps to produce.
State Rep. Doug McKillip's involvement has
also clouded the picture. The Republican has
said he will submit a map that would contain
10 geographical districts, eliminating ACC's
two "superdistricts," each of which covers half
the county, giving each citizen two represen
tatives on the commission.
The local committee has so far decided
not to discuss eliminating superdistricts, and
neither option on view at the public forums
contains that provision.
Dave Marr news@flagpole.com
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