A year ago, a line of training center opponents passed 16 cardboard boxes from the atrium, up a set of marble winding steps and into the municipal clerk’s office at Atlanta City Hall.
It was the culmination of a grassroots movement that began in June 2023 to force a referendum on whether the $90 million public safety training facility should be built with taxpayer money in the South River Forest.
At the time, organizers celebrated an enormous feat of collecting more than 100,000 signatures of Atlantans who wanted to see the issue put to a vote.
But the future of the referendum is more uncertain than ever.
Nine months after hearing oral arguments, a federal appeals court has yet to rule on pending litigation that will help determine which petition signatures are valid. That ruling is necessary before the petitions can be counted to determine if the referendum initiative was successful.
Meanwhile, the city is moving forward with full force to finish construction and open the massive center by the end of the year.
Petition organizers are preparing to descend on City Hall Sept. 16 for the one-year anniversary — and they aim to remind city officials that the battle against what they call “Cop City” is not over.
“I think that we’ve made it clear and we’ll continue to make it clear that we’re not going anywhere,” said Brittany Whaley, the southeast regional director for the Working Families Party.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
A years-long legal limbo
Not long after the referendum effort was launched, a group of DeKalb County residents sued the city arguing that residents who live near the facility should be able to canvas Atlantans for their signatures. State law requires petition collectors to live within city limits.
A federal district court judge initially ruled in favor of petitioners by ordering the city of Atlanta drop the requirement.
The decision also restarted the 60-day timeline in which opponents had to collect more than 70,000 signatures — at least 15% of registered Atlanta voters.
But the city appealed the ruling, further delaying clarity on which signatures will count and which won’t. At the same time, Atlanta officials refused to begin counting the signatures, citing the uncertainty created by the courts.
Fred Smith is a law professor at Emory University and former clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court. He said that the legal debate over the referendum poses two big questions.
“Does it violate the First Amendment to say that one has to live within a certain geographic location in order to petition?” he said. “And the state law question is: what are the circumstances in which a group of people can get a referendum on the ballot without legislative approval?”
“That’s a very unusual thing in Georgia and we’ve only kind of seen it once at the county level,” Smith said.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Wingo Smith, attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that both sides have been waiting for a court decision since oral arguments last December.
“There’s no time limit by which the Court of Appeals is required to make its decision,” he said. “However I think everyone expected — because they had given us an expedited schedule — that we would have had an answer by now.”
Surprise over the drawn-out timeline may be the one thing the city and organizers agree on.
During a panel on the referendum hosted by the Civic Center for Innovation last month, Council member Amir Farokhi said City Council members, too, have been waiting for answers.
“It’s been a long time — we’re going on eight or nine months,” he said. “I think we all expected it to rule earlier in the year.”
But Smith said it’s not uncommon for the process to take a year or more.
“This is a complex case because it does involve a federal constitutional question,” he said. “(And) it does involve some really complex questions of state law.”
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Opponents want Atlanta City Council members to bypass the court case altogether through legislation that would put the referendum directly on the ballot. Rev. Keyanna Jones Moore, a prominent local organizer, said the petition drive isn’t just for people against the project.
“Those signatures come from people who are in favor of Cop City and people who are against Cop City, but they are united in that they believe that people should have a right to vote,” she said.
City moves forward with construction
Despite pending legal challenges and a potential referendum, the city has been moving forward rapidly with construction of the 85-acre facility that will sit on Constitution Road in unincorporated DeKalb County.
The training center is expected to be open and in use by December, according to officials.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
The AJC has repeatedly been denied access to the site, but videos posted on Atlanta’s public safety social media pages show a nearly 59,000-square-foot academic building, a new fire station and stables for the city’s mounted patrols already built.
A four-acre slab of concrete is poured and ready for police, fire and some of the city’s utility workers to practice driving vehicles.
But attacks against the facility and its construction equipment have been ongoing. The most recent arson incident last month that targeted construction companies involved in the project is just one example of damage done to the site since crews first broke ground. The city has estimated that opponents have caused more than $10 million in damages to the facility.
“This is a ticking time bomb,” Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said during a press conference after the incident.
Credit: John Spink
Credit: John Spink
The attacks have raised questions about how the city is going to secure the site, especially with portions slated to be available for public use. Others wonder what will happen to the massive center if the referendum is ultimately successful?
“They’re creating irreparable damage and they’re allowed to continue to do that while we sit and wait for an opportunity to vote on the thing that’s going to potentially be built already,” Hooks, with the referendum effort, said.
It also raises another important question: what happens to the court case if the center is already up and running?
“It is conceivable that if the facility is actually built, then this could become what’s called moot,” said Smith, with Emory, who added that happens when the legal question at the center of a court case changes or disappears during the time it takes for the outcome to be finalized.
“We may be there unless the petitioners have some argument about how it still would be meaningful,” he said.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Legal fees grow
As of August, the city has spent nearly $2.2 million on legal representation and consulting on the pending petition verification process.
Records obtained by the AJC show a high price tag in two court cases involving the facility — the lawsuit against the eligibility requirements of the ballot referendum and an environmental challenge against the project.
The city has paid Robert Ashe, a well-known lawyer with Bondurant Mixson & Elmore, $780,000 for representation so far in the referendum case. The environmental case has proven more costly, racking up just over $1 million in legal fees to the law firm Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders.
The city also hired former Atlanta municipal clerk Foris Webb III to aid with signature validation, which includes verifying residency, name spelling and addresses with the signer’s voter registration.
According to contracts and invoices, the city has paid out 11 installments of $35,000 to Webb from September 2023 to July 2024, totaling $385,000.
The success of the referendum also hinges on how the city decides to validate signatures. There is no process laid out in state law for how local governments verify and count tens of thousands of names submitted as part of a petition drive.
And the methods used to address questionable signatures could affect the outcome.
Credit: Photo illustration by Pete Corson & Miguel Martinez / AJC
Credit: Photo illustration by Pete Corson & Miguel Martinez / AJC
An analysis of a sample of signatures on petitions by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and three partnering news organizations found that nearly half could be ruled invalid — meaning if petition organizers have met their goal, it is likely by a narrow margin.
In February, Atlanta City Council passed legislation that codifies a petition verification process — but the final version was stripped of many provisions that training center opponents supported.
Rohit Malhotra, founder and executive director of Civic Center for Innovation, said the Vote to Stop Cop City coalition worked with experts to craft legislation for a petition verification process that some City Council members favored.
“Then, in the eleventh hour, we watched them walk in a substitute ordinance,” he said. “So moving forward, we have no reason to trust that they’re not going to change the rules of the game again.”
“They are spending millions and millions of dollars on legal fees and fighting people who purely want a fair shot at something that is our right,” Malhotra said.
Opponents are looking to 2025, when the mayor and Atlanta City Council members are up for reelection, and have vowed to use the training center as an election issue against incumbents.
“If we can’t get them to engage when they are in elected office we’ll be able to get them to engage when they have competitive races and they’re trying to secure their political future,” Whaley said.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
