The Georgia House moved forward with a bill to redraw Athens commission districts in a vote on Thursday.
WUGA's Jeanne Davis has the story:
The Georgia State House passed House Bill 890 yesterday, a controversial measure that would draw roughly half of Athens residents into a different commission district and three sitting commissioners out of their current districts.
The bill, co-sponsored by State Representatives Houston Gaines and Marcus Wiedower, was withdrawn from the floor and sent back to committee on Monday. When it returned, it was packaged together with a number of other pieces of local legislation for a vote.
The bill will now be sent to the State Senate and, if it passes, on to the governor's desk for signature.
Meanwhile, the Athens-Clarke County Democratic Committee passed a motion to censure commissioners Mike Hamby and Alison Wright, who voted against both the local Board of Elections produced map and Democratic Represenative Spencer Frye's compromise map, as well as Ovita Thornton, who had abstained from voting on the first map but voted to approve the second map.
On a podcast recently, State Senator Bill Coswert said that Hamby, Thornton, and Wright called Republican members of the state legislative delegation to express their approval of the map that would draw three of their colleagues out of their districts, making it impossible for those colleagues to run for re-election this year.
The censure of Hamby, Wright and Thornton is primarily symbolic but underlines a growing divide on the commission.
