Georgia senators slap down wealthy suburb Buckhead's independence bid trends now
Leaders of a committee that attempted to split an affluent neighborhood from Atlanta have called it quits 'for now' after their movement was slapped down in the Georgia Senate.
Georgia senators torpedoed the effort by the Buckhead City Committee to sever Atlanta and Buckhead into two separate municipalities, with the measure failing by a 33-23 vote.
'If we jerk the heart out of the city of Atlanta, which is Buckhead, I know our capital city will die,' said Sen. Frank Ginn, a Danielsville Republican who chairs the committee that sent the bill to the full Senate.
If the bill had succeeded, it would have set up a referendum on creating a new city that could have cast a harsh spotlight on efforts by a richer, majority-white neighborhood to divorce itself from the poorer, Blacker city at the heart of the Deep South's largest urban area.
The Buckhead City Committee wrote a 'farewell' email to supporters on Sunday night, in which it blamed Governor Kemp for the measure's failure.
Georgia's governor Brian Kemp threw cold water on Buckhead 's push for city status on Wednesday, citing how granting such a request could violate state law
The proposed jurisdiction would sit outside Atlanta's city limits - one of several discrepancies pointed out by the state's governor in a Wednesday memo
'In a nutshell, Governor Kemp and his team coordinated behind closed doors to kill the Buckhead City bills before they even had the chance for an honest vote in the Senate,' the email read.
'Unfortunately, now that Governor Kemp has displayed that he does not support our right to vote, there is no path forward for a cityhood referendum while he remains governor until the end of his term in 2026.'
Kemp, a Republican who has forged a close working relationship with Democratic Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, added his voice to those questioning the legality and practicality of Buckhead City on Tuesday.
Kemp's chief lawyer sent out a harsh memo attacking the plans. Executive Counsel David Dove, like many, also said that the split could wreck the ability of all Georgia cities to borrow money. That's because bond markets would fear that cities could default on their debts if they broke into pieces.
'Have proponents of Senate Bills 113 and 114 considered what greater impacts this precedent may have on
