Carter

The expansion of the Lowndes County Commission has been postponed yet again as the Georgia General Assembly was unable to pass the bill in the recent session.

A letter sent to the three members of the local delegation, Representatives Amy Carter, Ellis Black and Jay Shaw, stated that the local legislation could not be passed due to “technical flaws” and would have to be resubmitted.

“The bill was not 100 percent correct and there needed to be a substitute, but the local officials did not have time to review it. By that time, it was the end of the session,” said Carter.

Despite the fact that voters approved the referendum to expand the commission by creating two super overlay districts to augment the three current districts, it has yet to come to fruition as the Department of Justice (DOJ) sent the plan back to the county with issues concerning the maps and the makeup of the two new superdistricts.

Before the plan can be resubmitted to DOJ, “it has to be acted upon by the General Assembly and signed by the Governor,” Joe Pritchard, county manager, said.

Maps were redrawn according to the DOJ’s guidelines, Pritchard said, and the missing material was only a technicality that could have been corrected quickly.

“They were missing the description of Districts 1, 2 and 3, which are not a part of the plan, but since they were referenced, they had to be included,” he said.

The county had spent the last several months redrawing the maps to satisfy the DOJ’s criteria before submitting it to the legislative counsel office.

“Legislative counsel is where we pick up our bills. I picked it up on April 14, which was Day 35 of the session, got my signatures and dropped the bill,” Carter said.

She explained that once a bill has been “dropped” or introduced in the House, it has to be read in the House three times and then twice in the Senate.

“It was read on April 20 for the first time, which was Day 37 of the session, and it was read the second time on Day 38,” she said, before being pulled by Rep. Ed Rynders, the chairman of the committee which oversees local legislation.

“His office does all local legislation, and he has a team who reviews the bills. They found the errors and he pulled the bill.”

Carter said the delegation only had five days left in the session to try and pass the local legislation, and the plan was for it to be read three times in the House, voted on, and then passed to the Senate on Day 39 for a first reading, with its second and final reading on Day 40, the last day of the session.

With no time left to correct any errors, Carter said there was no way to get it through.

“We will drop it at the beginning of the next session, if the commissioners all approve the substitute. We will drop it the first day of session and run it through immediately, if it has no flaws,” she said.

Pritchard said he sees no reason why it can’t be done that way and once it’s through and the governor signs it, it will be sent to the Justice Department for final approval.

“They (the DOJ) let us know that the plan would be acceptable if it met certain criteria, so we have reason to believe they will accept it,” he said. “Hopefully the two new commissioners taking office in January will not hinder the process.”