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Thursday, March 1, 2007
Floyd, so how ‘bout a Dem on the Gwinnett County Commission
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BEN GRAY / AJC
Gwinnett Legislators Reps. Hugh Floyd (left) and John Heard talk on the House floor.
Some Gwinnett commissioners seem to take it personally that Hugh Floyd wants to put a couple of new members on the board. Mike Beaudreau goes so far as to accuse the Democratic state House member of trying to get someone from his party elected to the all-GOP board.
The District 2 commissioner might not be entirely off base. While Floyd’s plan to add two superdistrict commissioners doesn’t sound like it would get a Democrat elected to either post, he has a Plan B that almost certainly would.
Floyd insists “this is not just a ploy for me to get a Democrat in.”
(We haven’t actually seen either plan. Floyd hasn’t introduced either proposal because state law prevents him from dropping either bill for at least a week after they’ve been advertised in the county legal organ.)
Plan B would redraw Gwinnett’s current commission district map and add two new districts to the board, Floyd said. Plan A merely overlays the current map with two new superdistrict seats, one of which would be be made up of Districts 1 and 3, and the other, Districts 2 and 4. Since the existing seats are all held by Republicans, there’s little chance the added superdistrict posts would be any different.
But Floyd says a second plan he’s thinking about introducing would create one Democrat-leaning seat that would include Gwinnett’s western I-85 corridor. One of Floyd’s Republican House colleagues, John Heard, said he’s seen the map and agrees that it does create a commission for a Democrat.
Some Gwinnett Republicans, among them Senate Rules Committee Chairman Don Balfour, said rapidly growing Gwinnett will ultimately need more representation on the board.
Floyd said it’s hard to draw a political map with more districts that doesn’t include a Democratic seat, especially in southern Gwinnett, which is trending that way. Floyd also pointed out that he didn’t draw the Plan B map, the nonpartisan state Legislative Reapportionment Office did.
“If Democrats get elected to the commission one day, it’ll have more to do with changing demographics than redrawing maps,” Floyd said.
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Are you in favor of adding commissioners?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of Gwinnett’s most powerful state lawmakers said Wednesday he’d consider a proposal to add two members to the Gwinnett County Commission.
What do you think of the idea?
