It’s been a controversial year for the Cobb County Board of Commissioners.
Chairwoman Lisa Cupid did not shy away from calling out the county’s poignant “political polarity” during her annual state of the county address Thursday night.
“I’ve never seen prior boards of commissioners be treated the way that we do,” said Cupid, a Democrat who presides over the first board controlled by her party in many years.
The metro Atlanta suburb is the last of the major metro counties to shift to Democratic control amid demographic changes that have affected the county’s political makeup.
But its partisan divide may have hit its peak in 2022, when the first all-women, majority-Black Democratic board faced several political challenges and concerted efforts to prevent change in the county that was a conservative stronghold only a few years ago.
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Cupid led the unprecedented challenge last year against state lawmakers who drew district lines removing Commissioner Jerica Richardson halfway through her term. The county passed its own electoral map to preserve her seat amid scrutiny last fall, creating a constitutional question over local redistricting powers.
A legal challenge from Keli Gambrill, a sitting Republican commissioner, has yet to be heard in court. But Cupid and Richardson have faced an onslaught of criticism from several repeat public speakers at nearly every board meeting since the county amended its map.
“I got more important things to do than to sit here and read a gossip column about what people think the (Board of Commissioners) is doing, or to get my panties in a bunch when people come to criticize us during public comment,” Cupid said during the speech at the Jennie T. Anderson Theatre inside the Cobb County Civic Center. “We have lives to help. We have a county to move forward.”
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In wealthier, more conservative pockets of the county, three failed cityhood movements advocated for more control over zoning — stoked by fears of high-density development encroaching on their communities. To Cupid, those cityhood efforts represented an attempted rebuke of the Democratic commissioners.
Name one of Cupid’s initiatives, and the backlash repeats itself. She raised the minimum wage for county employees to $17 per hour, she has advocated for affordable housing, and she hopes to get voters’ approval for a 30-year transit tax in 2024.
But with each proposal, a vocal minority launched repeated criticism.
“Well, we need affordable housing in Cobb County,” Cupid said. “To address what we already know is a need, there’s a corresponding effort to fight against it, and I don’t want to fight this battle by myself.”
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As the 2024 ballot referendum on a transit tax looms, controversy is likely to mount in the county that famously opted out of MARTA in the 1960s, dashing the hopes for a true regional transit system. Cupid has asked for support for the 30-year transit tax that the county will vote on in the fall of 2024.
“The people that depend on our buses — to go to school and to work, not to rob a bank or your home — I think we could do a better job of transporting them through the county and the region,” Cupid said, challenging a commonly referenced false narrative that transit systems bring crime. “Transit is economic development.”
Despite the criticism, Cupid said she is determined to move the county forward and to be more connected in the region, particularly in light of Wednesday’s mass shooting in a Midtown office building. Without strong relationships between Cobb County and the city of Atlanta, the suspect may not have been found near Truist Park as quickly as he was, she said.
“What we did (Wednesday) was a sign of having strong relationships in the region,” she said, applauding the Cobb County Police Department.
“They apprehended a gunman that shot multiple people killing one, and they did not return the same use of force,” Cupid said. “For them to bring that man in peacefully and allow him to face justice in a court of law should make us all feel really good.”
Police Chief Stuart VanHoozer credited the department’s technological tools, namely its camera system and license plate readers, for aiding officers in locating Deion Patterson after he allegedly “commandeered” a pickup truck before abandoning it near the Battery. He was later arrested by Cobb County police in a condominium community near Truist Park.
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