Milton County
Milton County was created on December 18, 1857 from parts of northeastern Cobb, southeastern Cherokee and southwestern Forsyth counties. Alpharetta was the county
seat until the end of 1931, when Milton was merged with Fulton County
to save it from bankruptcy during the Great Depression. At that time,
Campbell
County, which had already gone bankrupt, was also ceded to Fulton,
giving it its long irregular shape along the Chattahoochee River.
Georgia
already has the constitutional maximum of 159 counties, the 2nd highest
total number of counties in the nation after Texas. Yet, with the
Republicans in control of the state government, Milton County may be
ressurected. All in the name of making damn sure
that rich white folks’ money won’t be spent on anything that might
benefit a person of color! Jim Crow racism, 21st century
style….alive and well here in Georgia.
This whole movement
started with Sandy Springs begging for cityhood status starting in the
late 1960s, early 1970s. At that time, white flight from Atlanta was
in full force, and Sandy Springs was terrified that Atlanta might come
incorporate them into the city. Democrats in the city of Atlanta
blocked cityhood attempts until the GOP took over the legislature
following the 2004 elections. At that time, the long tradition of
honoring a local delegation’s wishes regarding local legislation was
abandoned. What the GOP representatives wanted for Sandy Springs was
to seal it off from the majority black Fulton County, despite what a
majority of the Fulton delegation wanted.
Personally, while I
know that Sandy Springs cityhood push was steeped in racism, I cannot
deny that a 90+% vote in favor of cityhood does clearly indicate where
the citizens wanted to go. They’d been pushing for a city for 30
something years, so while it did hurt Fulton for Sandy Springs to
incorporate, the movement didn’t bother me too much.
What has
happened since Sandy Springs became a city has bothered me a great deal
because the obvious racial hatred driving it is blatantly obvious. The
drives to incorporate Johns Creek and Milton in North Fulton were not
based in history, but on a childish fit by people who are consistently
outvoted by their fellow citizens to the south. Admittedly, Fulton
County government is a mess, but until this year, it’s been run by
Republicans since 1994! The County chair has been a member of the GOP
all that time, although the commission was usually 4-3 in favor of
Democrats. The chairs have also been white, so I don’t know where the
spoiled rich people in North Fulton got the idea that if they could
just seal themselves off from the "darker" South Fulton and Atlanta,
they’d be fine.
Milton and Johns Creek were about destroying
Fulton County’s government by making sure all local taxes went to the
cities. However, Fulton still runs schools, libraries, health centers,
etc. The entire former Milton County is now incorporated into
different cities, but that still allows some taxes from wealthy North
Fulton to potentially be spent in poorer South Fulton. For the rich
bitches in Alpharetta, that’s UNacceptable!
It has been reported
that North Fulton has 42% of the property wealth in the entire county,
although it’s land mass is much smaller. People have written into the
paper furious that while they provide 42% of the tax base, 42% of the
taxes are not spent on them. That kind of logic is ridiculous, and it
would mean that only the wealthiest citizens deserve any government
services at all. I realize we’re talking about Republicans here, but
haven’t they heard of the social contract? To those whom much is
given, much is expected. Rich people who have gained tremendous
benefits from the entire society have an obligation and responsibility
to give back to that society. They deserve good schools, police
protection, etc….but so do the poor. To achieve the American dream
of upward mobility, we must have a tax structure that gives the poor a
chance to get a good education and to better their circumstances. We
do a piss poor job of it now, but if we follow the "I provide 42% of
the tax base, so you must spend 42% of the taxes on me" philosophy, we
will re-create a medieval society where the poor get poorer, the rich
get richer, and the middle class disintegrates.
Luckily, there
are many obstacles in the way of giving rebirth to Milton County.
First, the Constitution of Georgia forbids it. Unless you want to go
South Georgia and dissolve, say, Jeff Davis County in order to make
room for a reborn Milton County, you must amend the constitution to
allow more than 159 counties. That requires 2/3 of the both houses of
the General Assembly plus a vote by the people. Thankfully, the GOP
does not control 2/3 of the legislature, so if Democrats just stick
together on this question, the proposal can be defeated.
Let’s
say the GOP does peel off enough Democrats to get their 2/3 majority to
send the question to the people of Georgia. It’s likely Georgia will
yawn and vote "yes" to Milton. But there are unanswered questions as
to how to affect a divorce. Fulton has contracts with Grady Health
System, MARTA and others. Milton cannot just shirk those contracts,
although you can bet they will look for the first chance to break
them. After all, Grady provides services to the poor (and probably too
many black folks for Alpharetta’s tastes), and we all know they don’t
care for MARTA. Then there is the matter of the school system. How do
you split that?
The GOP sponsors of the drive to recreate Milton
County have no answers for these questions. It’s because this drive is
not rooted in anything that makes good governmental sense. It is
steeped in racism, pure and simple. Exposing this basis for separation
is the new proposed map of Milton. Milton County reborn would not stop
at the Chattahoochee River at the thin neck of Fulton County, as would
be historically accurate. Milton would absorb Sandy Springs too, and
some would like for it to also include Buckhead. Gee, I wonder why
that map exists. The demographics carefully cherry pick the wealthy,
mostly white areas of the county and cleave them into a lilly white,
conservative, GOP bastion.
This drive to re-create Milton County
must fail. It’s intent is to financially destroy the city of Atlanta,
and to cause the fiscal collapse of the southern portion of Fulton
county simply because the citizens there are mostly of the wrong color
and have too low of a bank balance. Democrats in the legislature must
make a united stand against this foolishness, because only they can put
a stop to it.
