Legislative delegation taking action, but Worley doesn’t want BOC bypassed

Barrow’s legislative delegation — Rep. Terry England, Rep. Tommy Benton and Sen. Frank Ginn — have drafted a bill that would create a “Charter Review Committee” of citizens to make recommendations of changes to the county government structure. That could result in the county going to a new form of government, perhaps a county manager system.

The idea of a citizens’ committee echoes a call by Commissioner Steve Worley to have the Barrow County Board of Commissioners set up a 10-member group to do the same evaluation.

However, Worley said Wednesday morning that the delegation has told him that they basically want a state-controlled process for amending the charter rather than a board-controlled process.

But Worley said he does not want the delegation controlling the process and ultimately bypassing the will of the sitting county commissioners.

He said the first time he had any indication that the local delegation planned to submit such a bill was this past weekend – days after the BOC unanimously approved his motion for a board-appointed charter review committee.

He said if they had wanted to establish a committee themselves, they should have asked to be placed on the March 8 agenda like he did.

For the full story, see the March 16 issue of the Barrow Journal.