Tag: Burrell Ellis

As a government reformer launches a bid to become county CEO, state lawmakers threaten to eliminate the job altogether

Not long ago, Clayton County was metro Atlanta’s cautionary example of municipal dysfunction. Then came DeKalb. We rank each venality out of 10.

One would think that having former Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers literally waiting in the wings to tell the DeKalb County Commission how riddled with corruption its county is—“rotten to the core” is how he put it in a letter this week to the county—might engender a sense of fiscal restraint in the board.

First came Dunwoody, which snatched up Perimeter Center, arguably the richest square mile of commercial property in metro Atlanta. Then came Brookhaven, which successfully padded its tax rolls with parcels lying far outside its historic neighborhood borders.

When Victor Hill took office as Clayton County sheriff in January—despite thirty-two pending felony charges—we were tempted to dub Clayton our most dysfunctional county.