Supporters of deannexation may look to continue their effort, possibly through new and more detailed legislative proposals.
Christian Zimm, the vice president of communications for the BCC who is running for election to Georgia’s Atlanta-based 5th Congressional District, said the movement is “far from over.”
“We’ll see what happens in the rest of the session,” he said, speaking in his capacity as a candidate for Congress. “We’ve made a lot of progress this year getting two bills into the legislature, and people thought it would never get this far.”
Indeed, GOP leaders left open the possibility that the legislation could be on the table again next year. Ralston, the House speaker, told reporters Friday that he would be watching to see how city leaders address crime.
“We’ll be back next year if things haven’t changed a lot,” he said.
The secession of Buckhead would strike at the power of the city’s Black political class. Atlanta as a whole is 51% Black, according to 2019 census data. An analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that the new Buckhead City would be roughly three-quarters White.
Black residents have been involved in a 50-year project to accrue power in the city, beginning with the election of the first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson, in 1973. Today, a mostly Black cast of elected officials is in charge of the largest city in the South, which has one of the highest concentrations of Fortune 500 company headquarters in the nation.
Financial Realities
Businesses in Buckhead urged lawmakers this month to table legislation to create Buckhead City, saying that it would be costly to create a new city from scratch. Some officials expressed concern that deannexation would threaten the Atlanta’s ability to attract companies and continue to develop its economy.
Losing Buckhead would potentially leave Atlanta to manage its debt load with a dramatically reduced revenue base. The city had about $274 million of general-obligation bonds outstanding in fiscal 2020, according to its financial report.
Lobbying groups and grassroots organizations had made the case to state lawmakers that deannexation would threaten Atlanta’s standing in the bond market, raising the risk of rating downgrades and an attendant rise in its cost to borrow.