By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
NOV. 15, 2022 | Gwinnettians have just elected a new 30-member diverse delegation to the State Legislature. A pressing issue should be their first order of business: they should address the inadequate salaries of the Gwinnett County Commission.
As regular readers of GwinnettForum know, the issue of “21st century salary for the Gwinnett County Commission members” is one of our Continuing Objectives.
The current chairman of the commission’s salary is $85,921, totally out of date and inadequate for the job. The district commission’s salary is $57,462, more in keeping for a part time job. But these salaries also need to be addressed.
We won’t go into the background or necessity to address these salaries. People in Gwinnett are familiar with these arguments.
Therefore, we stress and emphasize to the newly-elected delegation of legislators: recognize the importance of this salary problem, and address it up front and foremost during the coming legislative session. Don’t wait until the last minute, when everything gets out of whack, to act.
Do this job to make Gwinnett even greater.
Today let’s examine what this new legislative delegation looks like. It is amazingly diverse, as you will see. First, it’s made up of 30 citizens, 20 Democrats and 10 Republicans.
Now let’s look at other demographic identities. It consists of:
- Ten White males.
- Five Black females.
- Four Black males.
- Four Asian males.
- Three Asian females.
- Two White females.
- Two Hispanic males.
Let’s look at their religions:
- Fifteen are Protestant.
- Six are Catholic.
- Four are Muslim.
- One says “no religion.”
- Four are unknown.
Where were they born?
- Eight of them are from Georgia. That includes four born in Atlanta, two in Lawrenceville, and one each in Americus and Decatur.
- There are 14 from Southern states.
- Two each from Puerto Rico and New Jersey.
- Two from Nigeria.
- And then the rest from many areas around the entire world. That includes San Francisco, Oklahoma, Indianapolis, Elkins, W.Va., Jordan, Manila, Seoul, Palestine and Bangladesh.
By now, anyone reading this can get an idea of just how diverse the people of Gwinnett are, based merely on where their elected legislative delegation is from.
The rest of Georgia isn’t anywhere nearly as diverse as is this Gwinnett group of legislators. You wonder what the “good old boys (and today girls) of Middle and South Georgia will be thinking of the legislators from Gwinnett. With it being solidly Democratic in politics, and with the overall statehouse members being majority Republican, that alone may prove to have some stumbling blocks.
Yet the Gwinnett group will find some legislative members from other parts of Metro Atlanta who are increasingly diverse also. The halls of the legislature are far different from what it has been in the past. It is beginning to reflect the population more than ever. That may be the most positive aspect of the 2023-24 legislature.
We look forward to the time when this new face of government in Georgia can become a solid block of common good and decency, able to overcome their differences and work to make the Empire State of the South even better.
That’s a view of who the citizens of Gwinnett have elected. Now, legislators, go and do your job in the best way possible.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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