Buckhead Cityhood

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Buckhead cityhood group claims political interference

By John Ruch

A feasibility study required for the Buckhead cityhood movement to move forward is underway at a university that the local advocacy committee declined to publicly name, claiming that other schools were politically pressured not to conduct the study.

The Carl Vinston Institute of Government, a prominent program at the University of Georgia that conducts such studies, says it declined to take on the Buckhead project, but not due to political pressure. An anticityhood group also dismissed the claim as “conspiracy theories.”

State Rep. Darlene Taylor (R-Thomasville), the chair of a Georgia House committee overseeing the study process, says there may just be confusion Bill White, chairman and CEO of the about which schools to use and Buckhead Exploratory Committee. that the Buckhead group is proceeding at its own risk with a study it may have to redo later.

The pro-cityhood Buckhead Exploratory Committee (BEC) is at the start of a two-year quest to have the neighborhood leave Atlanta and become an independent “Buckhead City.” State law requires a feasibility study detailing the local impacts of cityhood. Bill White, BEC’s chairman and CEO, said that “we’re deep into the feasibility study and it should be done in six to eight weeks.”

But, he said, that is happening only after a rejection from one school and “writing on the wall” from three others. White said the BEC commissioned the study from a different institution in Georgia, “which I’m not going to be telling who it is … [because] the more information out there, the more the city of Atlanta organized opposition tries to obfuscate the government business.”

White said his suspicions of meddling began at a Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods forum in May with Linda Klein, a cityhood opponent. Klein, who co-founded the anticityhood group Committee for a United Atlanta (CUA), said in that forum that four universities known for cityhood studies “all are unwilling to do this study.”

Klein did not respond to a comment request, but fellow CUA co-founder Edward Lindsey said White had made similar statements to him. “I said, I didn’t do a damn thing,’” said Lindsey. “If he wants to play conspiracy theories, so be it.”