Georgia bill could ease state takeovers of cities, raising equity concerns

The Georgia Senate is considering a bill that would make it easier for the state to take over cities.

Isabel Otero, the Georgia policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that House Bill 1166 creates a new definition of a distressed city making it much easier for the state to take control of local governments.

“In Georgia’s political context, this means that there’s a particular danger for like Black-led, Black majority cities, cities that are highly diverse,” she said.

If a city is deemed distressed under the processes of the bill, a state official would be appointed to manage the city’s finances.

“That is again like an extreme thing to do when a city might be under financial distress. It creates this sort of ability for the state to approve of what local folks are deciding for themselves,” she said.

Otero said they are advocating to amend the bill to create a better definition for a distressed city so it doesn’t apply to hundreds of cities in the state.

“We don’t want this to be used as a political tool to intervene where the state legislature, the governor or the attorney general dislikes what that city is actually doing,” she said.

After the end of the funds from the coronavirus pandemic and the shift of the federal government to reduce spending on local governments, Otero said cities are hurting, but this is not the solution.

“This is just shifting the burden to different people and not actually addressing whatever financial issues these cities are actually having,” she said.

Otero said over the past several years, the Georgia legislature has shifted in its approach to maintaining local control of cities and counties.

“As cities do get more diverse, as they’re trying to do more progressive sort of policies around public safety, around housing, around all these other issues, we see sort of a backlash from state legislators who don’t necessarily agree with what’s happening at the city level or the municipality level,” she said.

The legislative session ends at midnight on April 2, and Otero said people need to make their voices heard.