By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
AUG. 24, 2021 | Two Gwinnettians achieved additional distinction recently, when the Georgia Municipal Association named them to its Hall of Fame.
We’re speaking of Sugar Hill Mayor Steve Edwards, and Suwanee Mayor Jimmy Burnette, who were inducted at a recent GMA meeting in Savannah. This is a singular honor, since those in the Hall of Fame have either been president of GMA or have made “have made extraordinary contributions to municipal government.”
Edwards has been on the City Council since 2004, and became mayor in 2015. He has lived in Sugar Hill for over 20 years. Burnette has been on the Suwanee council since 1996, and mayor since 2011. He was born and raised in Suwanee, and his father served as a City Councilmember for 32 years, from 1963-95.
Edwards
Burnette
Other members of the GMA Hall of Fame from Gwinnett include the late Lillian Webb of Norcross (1982), Philip Beard of Buford (2007) and Linda Blechinger, Auburn, 2019.
Efficient government: we were thinking about this the other day: the county is indebted to Lillian Webb, former Norcross mayor, and for eight years chairman of the county commission, for starting something new in local government. She initiated a “consent agenda” at city and county meetings. This means that items before the government that are routine, procedural, informational and self-explanatory non-controversial, do not have to each be voted on individually, which in the days before consent agendas, took forever. Some commission meetings would last all day. With a consent agenda, all these items are voted on in one motion, a far-better method of holding such a meeting.
Georgia’s Seventh Congressional District, composed mostly of Gwinnett, plus portions of Forsyth County, was the fastest growing Congressional District in Georgia between 2010 and 2020. This district now has 844,773 people. The second fastest was District 13 (west of Atlanta including Cobb County) with 802,943 residents.
Georgia’s 2020 Census population is now 10,725,274, a 10.26 percent growth, or nearly a million more people in Georgia than in 2010, in raw numbers, 997,708 more. That means the state’s Congressional district should have a population after redistricting of 766,091 people.
That also means that the Seventh District could easily fit within the 957,062 people now in Gwinnett. So the question that faces redistricting officials: what shall we do? Do we allow one complete district to be in Gwinnett, and probably Democratic; or should we find a way to split Gwinnett among one or several districts to insure more Republicans in Congress?
At one time, this corner wanted Gwinnett to have its own district wholly within the county. But when there are more than one person representing the county, that in one way of thinking would give the people in Gwinnett more than one ear to try to influence the Congress!
So which states picked up Congressional seats? Montana, Oregon, Colorado, North Carolina, and Florida all picked up one seat, while Texas picked up two. Losing a seat were Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, California, and West Virginia.
That cap means that the size of the average Congressional district is now 711,000 people, a number that favors smaller, more rural, whiter states in the House of Representatives. It also favors those smaller, rural states in the Electoral College.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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