July 23, 2017

First, I appreciate the tremendous outpouring of support from Milton’s citizens.  Since the relaunch of the blog in late May, over 1300 of you have visited the blog and it has received nearly 3500 hits.  Around 130 new people have signed our petition.  Our videos have been watched nearly 700 times.

Several attempts are being made to silence Milton’s citizens, including the submission of a massive Open Records Request, but I am certain it will all come to nought.  As always, my focus will be on debating policy and governance, rather than the politics of personal destruction.

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Today’s blog is about the impact of the redistricting on Milton.  Of course, the process violated nearly every principle of good governance:  transparency, rigor, fairness, and citizen participation.  But what about the act itself?  Who cares that 182 citizens were moved?  According to Bill Lusk, the change was minor.  And Ms. Thurman claims that because voting in Milton is at-large (i.e., all Milton citizens vote for all Council Members, regardless of district), the change did not affect how a single citizen votes.  However, this is backwards logic.

From my perspective, the change affected how every citizen votes.  Because all Milton citizens vote for all Council Members, all Council Members represent all citizens.  And as often as not, a citizen takes his concerns to a Council Member based on a referral, a friendship, agreement on an issue, or some other factor that has nothing to do with a Council Member living in a citizen’s district.  And even Ms. Thurman acknowledges that the residents of The Estates at Atlanta National were, in fact, seeking her out although she was outside their district.  In fact, she contends that many considered her their representative.  So you see, it is not necessary to change district boundaries to represent any citizen in Milton.  And City Council members represent non-district citizens all the time; that is their obligation.

So the argument that the district lines needed to be moved so that Ms. Thurman could represent the residents of The Estates at Atlanta National (EAN) is contrived.  And it was manufactured to disguise the real reason:  Ms. Thurman needed to change the district lines to keep her seat on Council when she moved to EAN.  The result is that democracy was thwarted in Milton.  Why?

First, the change should have been approved by our elected representatives on Council before it was introduced as legislation.

Second, Ms. Thurman should have relinquished her seat before she moved.  This would have resulted in an election to fill her seat.  However, changing the district boundaries allowed Ms. Thurman to keep her seat.  In so doing, Ms. Thurman denied all Milton voters an opportunity to elect a new District 1 representative.  All voters were disenfranchised.  So while Ms. Thurman contends that not a single voter was affected, I contend that every voter was affected.

Third and lastly, changing the district lines denied all of the voters in District 1 the right to run for the District 1 seat.

So with the district change, democracy was thwarted in Milton.  And at the time, not a single Milton voter knew about it, but now they do . . .

There is a positive outcome in all this.  It is highly unlikely that a Council Member will ever again get Milton’s Charter changed without Council approval and public input.  Those days are over.  Good governance is on the march.  Last Monday night even Ms. Thurman acknowledged (finally) that she wished she had gone about the district change differently.

Advocating For Good Governance,

Tim Becker