When Sandy Springs became the first of metro Atlanta’s new cities, it pioneered a novel way to run local government, with services delivered by companies and just a handful of public employees.

The outsourced model of government soon became the template for each city that followed. Those new communities sought professional management of parks, business licensing, courts and more.

But 12 years into the cityhood movement, these young municipalities are straying from their original, rigid reliance on privatized government.

“It wasn’t all that it promised to be,” former Brookhaven Mayor Rebecca Chase Williams said.

To read more about the privatization model, and what cities are doing, read the full story only at myAJC.com.

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Devonia Inman (center wearing mask) is led past rows of barbed wire to freedom out of the Augusta State Medical Prison after being released from custody after serving 23 years in prison for a wrongful conviction on Monday, Dec 20, 2021, in Grovetown. His charges were dismissed in a murder case. (AJC file photo)

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Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution