Since the day I began serving you in the State House almost four years ago, I have been pushing to reform DeKalb County’s “strong CEO” form of government.
The CEO presides over county commission meetings, sets the agenda for those meetings, votes in the event of a tie, has the power to veto legislation, directs the county staff, who serve at the CEO’s pleasure, and is responsible for the day-to-day administration of county services.
That is too much power to give any single elected official. In a county of 740,000 people, it makes no sense to have a system where our elected county commissioners are completely marginalized.
This year, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 52 to rein in the powers of the DeKalb CEO. I was proud to co-sponsor and champion this legislation.
SB 52 will give the county commission the power to conduct and set the agenda for its own meetings. That will enable our county commissioners to be a more effective “check and balance” against the CEO’s powers.
The President doesn’t preside over Congress, the Governor doesn’t preside over the General Assembly, and the CEO shouldn’t preside over the DeKalb County Commission.
SB 52 must be ratified by DeKalb voters in the November 4th election in order to take effect. I encourage you to vote in favor of this referendum.
If you would like to see an example of why SB 52 is a good idea, please take a look at the below YouTube videos. This is slightly more than 12 minutes of a county commission meeting broken into three parts. Warning: This is not the county commission’s finest moment.
