The University of Georgia Public Service and Outreach and Georgia Trend magazine have recognized four communities that have worked across public-private sectors and nonprofit boundaries on initiatives to improve their community and the quality of life for their citizens. Blairsville-Union County was one of those communities recognized for their re-branding process and received one of
George Chidi wrote a four part series this week on the problems of an ungovernable DeKalb County. Today in another form he’s launched the fifth. George has announced he will seek the open seat vacated by Stan Watson on the DeKalb County Commission. This will require George to resign as a city councilman for the
Find part one of the series here. Find part two here. Find part three here. No incumbent commissioner has lost an election in DeKalb County in at least 20 years. So, what might make this run different? To start, Sharon Barnes-Sutton has truly distinguished herself as an example of how to draw negative attention in
(Find part one here. Find part two here.) I should probably mention that Sharon Barnes-Sutton lost my vote years ago when she told a crowd at a Democratic breakfast that media scrutiny could be dismissed as the act of white newsrooms looking for trouble in black communities. I’m sensitive to that. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution hired me
Find part one of the series here. The streams feeding the lakes of the Mainstreet Community subdivision have a silting problem. “We’ve been trying to get DeKalb County out here to fix this for five years,” said Nadine Rivers-Johnson, the community manager for the middle-income family subdivision off of South Hairston. “When we try to talk
Mohad Ragueh said he was one of the first people to respond to the fire Saturday. It started in a neighbor’s unit on the second floor, one inhabited by two sisters from Africa, their children, and a man they didn’t know well to whom they had rented one of the rooms, he said. When the fire alarms went
I discovered something about DeKalb politics as I went looking for the gears in the machine, and it’s been swirling around in my head, a Lovecraftian horror that might have spared me notebooks full of arcane twaddle, gibbering madness and self-destruction, if only I had ignored the early signs and stopped asking questions. Most people
To say that the 2016 legislative session might was a contentious one for Senator Josh McKoon of Columbus might be a bit of an understatement. In early February, Sen. McKoon went to the Senate well for a point of personal privilege to talk about the spat between Rep. Tommy Benton and Sen. Vincent Fort over
Something about poking around politics in DeKalb County provokes a reaction I call rabid wombat flinging. Inquiry brings a snarling, over-the-top angry reaction designed to raise the legal and emotional cost of pursuing answers. A couple of years ago, I went looking for answers to basic questions about a spurious ethics complaint launched by a part-time
The Office of Attorney General Sam Olens has cited the Hospital Authority of Valdosta and Lowndes County -which is in charge of South Georgia Medical Center – with a fine and training requirements following the authority’s failure to comply with open government laws. The punishment follows an investigation stemming from a February meeting where the
