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Politics & Government

Superdistricts Have Long History, Controversy

Eliminating superdistricts may be more complicated than you think.

If Athens-Clarke County officials follow through on a recommendation to appoint a committee to examine the county's superdistricts, they may be opening up a large electoral can of worms.

A citizens committee appointed by Mayor Nancy Denson to vet proposed new district maps for Athens-Clarke County made that recommendation earlier this month, opening the door for an overhaul of the current structure of city-county government.

It's a change that some citizens say is long overdue.

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"Some people feel that the time has come for the superdistricts to be eliminated," said District 2 Commissioner Harry Sims. Sims, the longest-serving member of the Athens-Clarke County Commission, also chaired the citizens reapportionment committee appointed by Mayor Denson.

The proposal to create the superdistricts - two districts which each represent half of the county - was a compromise measure to win support for unification of the city and county governments in 1990. Before unification, the City of Athens was divided into five wards, each of which had two city council members serving staggered terms. Creating superdistricts was seen as a way to assure city residents of the same double level of representation under unification that they were used to.

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Pat Allen, who served on the unification commission that created the 1990 charter, said that the attempt was, "the fourth attempt over 20 years to unify the governments ... the charge was to write a charter to unify the two governments that could be voted on by the residents."

According to Allen, the process was a community-wide initiative.

"We heard county residents saying, 'You know, I like voting on more than one person [to represent them on the city council],'" Allen said. "The idea was sort of like state government, one person who is clearly identified as 'their' commissioner and a second person who could also be a resource."

Many Athens' African-Americans have long held that the superdistricts dilute black representation on the Commission, however.

Under the current structure, two of ten Athens-Clarke County Commissioners are African-American, Sims and District 3 Commissioner George Maxwell. If superdistricts were eliminated, and both men retained their seats, African-American representation on the Commission would jump from 20% to 25%. 

Earlier this month, local attorney Ken Dious, who's African American, developed his version of a new map for Athens-Clarke County, which would divide the county into 10 equally-sized districts, in terms of population, and would eliminate superdistricts completely.

That map was the basis for a similar idea developed by Republican State Representative Doug McKillip. Although his final map looks radically different from Dious' original, Dious supports it.

The McKillip/Dious plan is projected to create just two African-American-influenced districts, along with a third which is majority-minority, thanks to a large population of Hispanic registered voters.

State Representative Keith Heard is skeptical of the McKillip/Dious plan, in part because McKillip has said that one of his goals was to create at least one solidly Republican commission district in Athens-Clarke County.

"One thing I'm not going to agree with is someone saying, 'Let's get rid of superdistricts and create more Republican districts,'" Heard said. "We have non-partisan elections in Athens-Clarke County. I don't see why partisanship had to enter into this issue."

Heard said he thinks local citizens should be "very cautious" about getting rid of superdistricts.

"Sometimes when people say, 'We're giving you something,' you have to ask: are they helping you or helping themselves," Heard said. "That's something I'm looking at very carefully with Doug's map."

Other African-American leaders counsel caution, like John Jeffreys, who serves on the local Democratic Committee. He's also an official with the Democratic Party of Georgia.

"I'd rather stay with what we've got until we can take a serious look at this," Jeffreys said. 

If superdistricts are to be eliminated, it would be a very complex process. State law mandates that the current superdistrict commissioners, Mike Hamby and Kelly Girtz, can't have their offices eliminated before their terms expire.

While Hamby's seat is up for election next year, Girtz's term does not expire until 2014. It is unclear exactly what mechanism could be used to make the transition to a new structure.

One possibility would be to make Hamby's term a two-year term, expiring simultaneously with Girtz's, allowing the superdistricts to be eliminated in 2014.

However, attorneys have speculated that in a worst-case scenario, temporary legislation would need to be passed to make all commission terms expire in the same year, essentially starting over from scratch.

Regardless of how superdistricts might be eliminated, the earliest it could potentially happen is in 2014. 

Even so, Commissioner Harry Sims believes the process of studying whether the community wants to eliminate superdistricts should start soon. 

"If we are planning on removing those districts, there needs to be a mechanism set up to change the map," Sims said. "That is something we need to move forward with as quickly as possible."

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