Shocking News: AJC reports that DeKalb County may have violated State Law

DeKalb lawsuit against the State filed by Roy Barnes

Who am I kidding, it's only business as usual in DeKalb County.

The Vernon Jones administration has demonstrated for seven years that County government cannot even get along with its own cities. Jones and DeKalb reneged on their original agreement to fairly share the HOST taxes with the cities and city taxpayers. That was the basis upon which people voted for HOST. Once it passed, Jones and DeKalb changed the rules and refused to share. I hope that the State resoundingly wins this suit so that in the future we will have some fair and reasonable people in charge of the taxpayers money, rather than the arbitrary, vindictive arrangement we've seen in DeKalb County these past 7 years.

Today the AJC reports that the DeKalb County commissioners may have violated state law last year when they secretly authorized filing a lawsuit over how county sales tax revenue would be shared with a future city of Dunwoody. The lawsuit, which was filed Thursday, was approved by all seven commissioners in a vote during a closed meeting on April 24, 2007, according to minutes of the meeting obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

With few exceptions, such as discussion of a personnel matter or litigation, actions by county commissions must be held for all to see, said Hollie Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation. "Under the open meetings act, all votes by a public agency must be public." The law is clear on that, she said. "It's a well-established interpretation."

Three days after that meeting, DeKalb hired former Gov. Roy Barnes as legal counsel for the case.The lawsuit, which was filed in Fulton County Superior Court, names Gov. Sonny Perdue as a defendant. That's because DeKalb is seeking an injunction against state enforcement of a 2007 law that changes the way the county's penny-on-the-dollar sales tax is distributed.

DeKalb has been embroiled for years in a legal tiff with many of its cities over the distribution formula for the homestead option sales and use tax, or HOST. Most of the millions of dollars in proceeds subsidize a rollback of homeowner property taxes, but a fifth of the money must go toward construction of new roads and other infrastructure.

On a related note, the AJC article and this interview by Elaine Boyer doesn't seem to mesh? I'm sure there is an explanation.